Amy Tan (1) (1952–)

Backyard Bird Chronicles - Tan
5 stars

I’m a birder. I’ve been actively bird watching with bird guides and binoculars for more than 30 years. I keep lists. I’ve rarely traveled specifically to look for birds, but I fit my bird walks in where I can. Southern California is a great place for birding. There’s always my backyard.

Amy Tan lives in the San Francisco Bay area. I’m sure her backyard is in a higher rent zone than mine. We look out on different habitats. Still, I recognized show more all of the species that she reported seeing in her backyard. She has some that don’t visit my feeders, and I have a few that will never grace her yard. I propped her book in my kitchen table book stand, drank my coffee, and interspersed my own backyard identification with pages of her nature journal. I shared her backyard observations and it felt like I was sharing mine.

Her observations delighted and inspired me. I added hot pepper suet to discourage marauding squirrels on her recommendation. (It works!). I added another bird bath and varied the food a bit. I do give the birds dried mealworms sometimes, but I haven't quite the dedication that Tan has. I haven’t bought live mealworms for the backyard buffet. Yet.

I keep lists. I note species, numbers of birds, weather and occasionally interesting behavior. I cannot draw. Amy Tan isn’t only a writer, she’s an artist. This book is derived from her nature journal. She draws her backyard bird activity. Her sketches are annotated. Her drawings have speech captions as she imagines exactly what might be going on in those little bird brains. Her drawings are both comical and informative. Her finished portraits are beautiful. This is a book that needs to be read in its paperbound edition. The e-book doesn’t reproduce the drawings adequately and the audiobook misses out on them altogether. show less

2023 Advent, Day 4:I had never read a book by Amy Tan before, but this one made me want to. It was beautifully written and touched in themes of family, generational trauma, forgiveness, and love. It was very sad, particularly in consideration of some dementia and memory loss plot points, which are close to my heart especially. The only complaints I have are that I believe some characters deserved a comeuppance which they never received and some deserved justice and happier endings, which show more they never received. I know this happens in real life every day, but I want my fiction characters to have better than that. I want happy endings. Still, 4 stars. show less

i don't know how to describe this, but i feel like every time i read amy tan, i'm reading heart writing. this was so lovely and beautiful. the history and relationship she evokes here is really something special. there is this feeling of going back in time, of seeing a culture and a small town living away from the world, and there is a modern sense also. she merges these two ways of life and these sensibilities so well.

this was pretty wonderful all around.

"She was finally old enough to show more forget all she had been told to be." show less

I sought this book out after watching the gripping documentary based on it - An Unintended Memoir. Tan's unique history does more than fuel her writing - I was reminded of [[David Morrell]]'s [Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing], as he explained the therapeutic nature of his own writing experience and it bears a striking resemblance to Tan's, even though she doesn't characterize it quite that way.

A couple reviews here bemoan that the book isn't a straight memoir - just the facts, ma'am. But show more Tan makes it clear from the start she wasn't interested in that sort of a book. She was more interested in giving us a peek inside her head, and she does that more than most any other writer I've ever read. (A recent example of this kind of glimpse might be the back material of [[Chaim Potok]]'s book [The Chosen].) One section of her book actually has her transcribing a piece of music she's expanded into a fairytale; another section has her dipping into her linguistic knowledge and curiosities; and throughout, there are snippets of her journal. I felt like a tourist in a grand house, peeking into various rooms and enjoying the sights displayed.

All along, she lays out the bread crumbs of her life and history, always careful to explain how they affected her emotionally. Memory and emotion are really the thematic pillars of the book.

Anyone who considers themselves a writer would do well to read this one. show less