Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir

From <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir on her life as a writer, her childhood, and the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory.<br><br>In <b>Where the Past Begins</b>, bestselling author of <i>The Joy Luck Club</i> and <i>The Valley of Amazement</i> Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels.<br><br>Tan explores shocking truths uncovered by family memorabilia -- the real reason behind an IQ test she took at age six, why her parents lied about their education, mysteries surrounding her maternal grandmother -- and, for the first time publicly, writes about her complex relationship with her father, who died when she was fifteen. Supplied with candor and characteristic humor, <i>Where the Past Begins</i> takes readers into the idiosyncratic workings of her writer's mind, a journey that explores memory, imagination, and truth, with fiction serving as both her divining rod and link to meaning.<br><br>