#AmyTan

[tinycurtains]

I found out the most I could have was hope, and with that I was not denying any possibility, good or bad. I was just saying, If there is a choice, dear God or whatever you are, here's where the odds should be placed.

Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

[www-quotes-pics]

"If you can't change your fate, change your attitude."- Amy Tan

[manic-m]

The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

A book for the soul.

You know those rare times you read a book that leaves you with a profound feeling---unexplainable, rich, special. Like it was a book searching for you all its life and now that you’ve read it, its blessed you with all the gifts of its long wait.

Reading this book, I think of my mother. A strong, free-spirited woman of many rights and wrongs. Her tough love, compassion, patience, and wisdom is a part of me. My roots begin in her, and hers, from her mother. I sometimes forget she’s a human with desires, needs, curiosities. I forget she needs love just as much as me. This book reminds me that all I need to give back to my mother for years of her love is... love.

Written beautifully and succinctly, this book makes you believe that it’s the author’s third/fourth novel than a debut. Each story is a piece of a clever puzzle---and in the end, when you turn the last page, you feel warm and complete inside, like you do when you piece together your favorite puzzle. All the women in this story are part of the same page---the story of the unconditional love and limitless wisdom of all mothers.

I rate this book 5 Peaches (5/5).

[jbroperos]

PART 1 Because it’s PRWF week, I’m gonna post some throwback photos. From PLF (Philippine Literary Festival) in 2014 and 2015, to PRWF (Philippine Readers and Writes Festival) from 2016 to 2019, we created stories, shared experiences, built friendships, met some of the most iconic international and local authors. And of course, the bonding moments with officemates. Nakaka-stress, pero nakakataba ng puso. Sobrang fulfilling. Let’s go! #PLF2014 #PLF2015 #PRWF2016 #nationalbookstore #instagram #instagood #instatravel #adventure #authorfriends #bookstagram #Godisgood #happylife #live #love #life #dream #inspire #mood #feel #amytan #changraelee #rickylee #matthewquick #megwolitzer #adamjohnson #paulamclain #annatodd #piercebrown #markzdanielewski #memories https://www.instagram.com/p/CFpD8qWggTr/?igshid=kcjga7fks8in

[snowlessknitter]

With just a couple of weeks left in 2019 (and the 2010s 😳), I’ve decided to do a 2019 Year in Books! Now, my number of Books Read is not as big as a lot of other readers on Instagram have posted, but I like to think I go for quality, not quantity, when it comes to what I read. I have also discovered that though I have always scored highly in reading comprehension, I am also a notoriously slow reader. Anyway, here are all the books I’ve managed to *finish* in 2019 (with two currently in progress). The first pic is my stack of physical books, and the second is a collage of the ebooks I finished. 📚 The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - I actually started this one in October 2018, but finished it in March 2019. 📚 Looking for Alaska by John Green - My fastest read this year, it only took me four days to finish. 📚 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr - The first of three novels set during World War II that I read this year. 📚 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 📚 Ghost by Jason Reynolds 📚 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - A Book Bucket List book, this took me the longest to read, approximately six and a half months. 📚 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut - Another Book Bucket List book, this was easily my favorite book of the ones I finished this year. I have a feeling that more Vonnegut books are in my future. 📚 The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan 📚 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 📚 The Color Purple by Alice Walker What about you? Have you read any from my list here? Or did you have some favorites of your own that you read this year? Feel free to share your picks in the comments! #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #books #2019inbooks #booknerd #aynrand #johngreen #anthonydoerr #markuszusak #jasonreynolds #leotolstoy #kurtvonnegut #amytan #charlottebronte #alicewalker https://www.instagram.com/p/B6KE_6cpZfC/?igshid=5prygprjwpdq

[mirlin2020]

Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable - but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being 'alone': You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I'm talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age. ~Amy Tan #amytan #loneliness #aging #uniqueness (at The Finger Lakes Hotel) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4IrIOchFWY/?igshid=1qw31h4tf0m38

[inkbloodmilk]

"And her happiness was so great it spilled over, leaked into my room, and turned into tears of sorrow." #currentread #fiction #amytan #thehundredsecretsenses #yineye #yinyang #ghosts #siblings #sisters #chineseamerican #culture #novel #kwan #historical ##whatitalkaboutwhenitalkaboutbooks #heaven #afterlife #love #relationship #familial #classic #90s #goodreads #pages #books #generalfiction https://www.instagram.com/p/B1TcTNXpMMP/?igshid=1myjqffzq5k2c

[jtq1844]

Musings from the Car ...

Ensuring that my pre-owned, book-on-CD from a few days ago would be put to good use, I listened to Amy Tan’s Opposite of Fate.  It is a series of essays where Ms Tan’s sets the record straight on a few things like spurious internet-propagated “facts” about her professional and personal lives and what is family-history-inspired and what is fiction.  She examines the synchronicities and hurdles of her writing experience as well with wry skepticism and deep gratitude.  After an essay on how the events of 9/11/01 inculcated themselves into her life, I thought about the same.

Here is an essay I wrote which may be part of a vaguely-realized memoire-style set of essays which might eventually be entitled Living with the Extraordinary While Washing Socks:

 Where Was I on 9/11/01    

     On September 11 every year, someone invariably asks, "Where were you when the World Trade Center fell?"

     I’ll tell you, but first, I have to mention a few things that happened in 1999. The Millennium Panic that year still annoys me because the 2nd Millennium didn’t end in 2000; it ended with 2001.  It’s a math, off-by-one, how-to-count-years thing.  Because of mostly harmless short-sightedness by some software engineers, there was potential for some computer programming problems. The real concern was in regards to mischief-making, troubles that might be devised to be symbolic. My husband, having a background in "thinking like a terrorist” or other kind of trouble-making, headed up the Y2K Preparedness program for Cisco Systems. In brief, they planned for many contingencies and he knew a lot of people.

     The morning of 9/11/01, his cell phone bleeped extra early. I got up and turned on the news. We never turned on the TV in the morning, but this time I did. Mike shouted to me, “Turn on the News. Something happened.” 

     “It’s already ready on.”  We watched the Towers standing there with smoke billowing from one of them, as a newscaster explained that a plane flew into the one of the Towers. It was unclear whether it was an odd accident of some kind.

    Mike quickly dialed the phone, barking orders as he occasionally did, particularly when talking to people in the New York City office.  It's a speech pattern thing.  He said, “Just go with your gut. Grab whatever you can and start walking in the direction away from the Towers.”  The Cisco Offices were located in a building next door to the Twin Towers.  “Just. Do. It.” 

     We watched live footage of the second plane flying into the tower. It seemed like several moments before the building collapsed. The collapse was gratefully an implosion onto itself, taking out a minimum of its surroundings which could have included thousands of more lives. News reports of the Pentagon airplane and Pennsylvania crashes were filtering in. 

     On the house phone, Mike called one of his Y2K crisis management associates on the East Coast. His cell phone rang – it was the CEO. It seems that the big full-time Disaster Management Team at Cisco were at an all-hands, brainstorming meeting and were incommunicado.   (Yes, we got the irony.) Could he please head this up in the meantime?  Of course.

     It should be explained here that the emergency communications center for all of New York City – Fire, Police, Ambulance, etc – were located in the bowels of the WTC Twin Towers. They were gone. Out. Nothing.

      On the home phone, Mike next dialed one of the NYC Cisco people whom he hoped had followed his orders.  “Now, go to a cop and see how you can help.”  In his cell, he spoke to others.  No, that’s not right. He barked at others. This went on for several minutes, but Mike needed to get to his office. He barked back and forth like a General commanding troops over the two lines, occasionally hitting the flash button for call-waiting. I held fresh underwear for him to step into, pulled up his pants, buckled his belt, put on his socks, tied his shoes, buttoned and tucked his shirt all while he spoke with, ordered, devised, advised, and otherwise communicated. Maybe I should mention that Mike had had a kidney transplant nine months before and was on high amounts of steroids making his barking extra barky and his circumference extra challenging. From my point of view, dressing him was a heroic act.

     At one point, both phones were quiet. He went rigid and started to vibrate, reliving his own bombing trauma.  Oh, did I mention his survival of the 1983 truck-bomb into the American Embassy in Beirut as a covert CIA agent? This was how he had gotten his thinking-like-a-terrorist-or-other-kind-of-trouble-making training.  Tears streamed down his cheeks. His limbs were both floppy and locked at the same time. His cell phone buzzed. The tears stopped immediately, his body re-engaged.  “Mike here.  What do you need?”

     He was out the door in 5 minutes with a banana and thermos of tea.

     The remarkable communications recovery caught the eye of Interpol, trying to understand how in 24 hours, after losing ALL emergency communication systems, “How did NYC do it, Mr. Giuliani?”  “I dunno. Ask Cisco.”  “How did Cisco do it, Mr. Chambers?”  “I dunno. Ask Mike.”

     Mike did his part, as did so many people. Because of this and his position at work, he and a few others had an idea. What if every Cisco office anywhere in the world no matter how small reserved a closet to hold an emergency network backbone kit? It could be deployed within hours after any disaster needed communications to help with recovery. Mike doing his best Cap’n Pickard said, “Make it so” to the six gorilla cases in a closet in every Cisco office on Earth. This little plan was tested to its limits soon enough, during the Indonesian Tsunami. Then Katrina and ever since. Under his aegis, his group created Cisco-sponsored emergency vans with communications equipment that drive to disaster sites.  It has made a difference, largely an unsung difference. This is as it should be.

     Great changes at the Dawn of the New Millennium did bare out as the events of 2001 did in fact change everything, just not in the literal sense which to my mind is among the least important.  What other prophetic events would have some credence if we just looked at them another way?

    Where was I on 9/11? At home, washing his socks.

[digna2018]

If YOU can't change YOUR fate, change YOUR attitude. #amytan #change #you #attitude #dwowddailyinspo #dwowdfam #dailyworkoutwithdinelle #dwowd #dwowdinelle #coach_dinelle #coach_dinelle #pt #thursdaythoughts @coach_dinelle (at Bronx NY , 10473) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmL9yw1rN8H/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thewistfulwordwitch]

New #review #TheJoyLuckClub by #AmyTan As usually happens with me and older books, I watched the movie first, many years ago now. I loved it, the glimpses into these women's lives, the heartache and happiness of it all, the realness of the characters. I watched it often as a teenager, and it's stuck with me, in the back of my mind. I'm bummed that it took me so long to read the book itself. I love the book as much as I love the movie. The ending still made me cry. I look at the various mother-daughter relationships much differently now that I'm in my 40s and a mother of teenage girls myself, rather than the teenager I was when I watched it with my own mother, only able to really relate to the daughters at that time. Now, I understand certain things better and recognize pieces of myself in all of the mothers and all of their daughters now. Their stories are richly told, in their own distinct voices, and you can't help but be carried away with them as you read. It's definitely worth reading again. . . . . . #goodreads #Amazon #kindle #Bookbub #StoryGraph #iheartbooks #readingisfundamental #book #books #readallthebooks #booklover #bookworm #bookwrym #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksofinstagram #booksbooksbooks #read #reading #readersofinstagram #readmorebooks #readyourbooks #readabook #readallthebooks #authorsofinstagram #writersofinstagram #booksarelife https://www.instagram.com/p/CdOkiUIrg49/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thecpdiary]

If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude

AMY TAN

https://www.thecpdiary.com

[anna-lacina]

Amy Tan odkryłam stosunkowo niedawno i dopiero ją poznaję, czytając kilka jej książek na raz. Każda jest na tyle inna, że spokojnie mogę to robić. Jeśli chodzi o "Klub Radości i Szczęścia" to bardziej podoba mi się okładka nowszego wydania, bo mocniej odnosi się do treści - trudnych relacji między matkami i córkami, a wszystko w perspektywie przemieszania kultur i problemów, jakich doświadczają migranci w nowej ojczyźnie. No, ale udało mi się zdobyć akurat tę, a nie było łatwo, bo nakład już wyczerpany☹ Tytuł #KlubRadościiSzczęścia jest wieloznaczny. Jak mówi przypis (a przypisy są tu świetne) "Chińskie słowo julebu (klub) jest kalką fonetyczną angielskiego club, a poza tym znaczy też: „spotkanie (zgromadzenie) wspólnej wesołości". Tak więc organizowane w powieści imprezy towarzyskie mają po chińsku znaczenie: „Spotkania Wspólnej Wesołości w Radości i Szczęściu". Równocześnie jest to miejsce, gdzie spotykały się 4 kobiety podczas wojny, na krótko przed zajęciem miasta przez Japończyków, próbując w nienormalnym czasie i totalnym chaosie ocalić normalność choć na kilka godzin spotkania (Bardzo mi to koresponduje z książką "Ciemne gwiazdy, ciemne śniegi" którą czytam równolegle, a która dzieje się w stanie wojennym '81, napiszę o niej, gdy skończę). Kobiety wkładały najlepsze ubrania, grały w mahjonga i opowiadały sobie wesołe historie, udając, że nie są ani głodne ani przerażone. To pozwoliło im przetrwać i nie zwariować. Kilka lat później, już na emigracji, założycielka Klubu dobrała sobie trzy inne kobiety, emigrantki, jak ona, i jak ona mające za sobą przeżyte tragedie, o których nie były w stanie mówić. Wszystkie żywiły jednak nadzieje na przyszłość. Reaktywowany Klub łączy niczym kanwa kilkanaście opowiadań. Połowa z nich dotyczy matek, a połowa córek - już urodzonych w nowej ojczyźnie, nie znających chińskich znaków i łatwiej porozumiewających się po angielsku niż po chińsku. Bardzo ciekawe studium wzajemnych relacji - ponadczasowe i ponadkulturowe. Gorąco polecam. #amytan #joyluckclub #dobraksiążka #matkiicórki #chiny #emigracja #pograniczekultur #mądreksiążki #książkidającedomyślenia #zdjęciedlaksiążki #recenzjaksiążki #światrecenzentów #książkiipodróże https://www.instagram.com/p/CZaSqzQoGvY/?utm_medium=tumblr

[susanelizabethjonesart]

Instead of watching an #classichollywood #vintagefilm last evening, I watched two #tedtalks; one by @elizabeth_gilbert_writer and the other by #AmyTan, both on the subject of #creativity. #excellent #muse #daemon #creativespirits #creativepartnership

[maripilibarreda]

#MariBookClub 📖 "Los Cien Sentidos Sentidos Secretos" de Amy Tan (Original: The Hundred Secret Senses") • "Mi hermana Kwan cree que tiene ojos 𝒚𝒊𝒏: ve a quienes han muerto y ahora habitan en el mundo Yin, fantasmas que abandonaron las brumas tan solo para visitarla en su cama de la Calle Balboa de San Francisco." nos narra Olivia al inicio de esta historia de silencios, fe ciega, decepciones aprendidas, cosas guardadas por mucho tiempo. Un espíritu libre, un espíritu suprimido. ¿En qué momento despertarán a la realidad?¿Y a cual realidad?. "El tiempo no es el mismo entre una vida y la siguiente". Olivia y Kwan. ¿Dejarte llevar o resistirte?¿Cuánto del mundo suprime tu espíritu o vuelas libremente sin importar lo que piensen los demás?. Amy Tan me llevó del pasado al presente; de una historia a otra; de una país a otro, como tan bien sabe hacerlo, y me tuvo capturada en el segundo libro que leo de ella. (Aunque la pandemia me haya detenido de leer por varios meses, puro stress) Fábulas, vidas, enseñanzas, sacrificios, historias que enseñan mucho porque "el límite está en el cielo... mientras no llueva" y, por supuesto, leer sana mucho. Todos tenemos un poco de Kwan y un poco de Olivia. Me quedo con este diálogo que me hizo reír: "- ¡Kwan! Simon y yo vamos a dar un paseo. - ¿Adónde? - grita ella a su vez. - Por ahí. - ¿Cuándo volvéis? - Ya sabes, cuando sea. - ¿Cómo sé qué hora me preocupo? - No te preocupes." Feliz lectura con esta pieza maestra. ✅❣️ ✒️: @amytanwriter 📇: @tusquetseditores 📍: @librerialafamilia #LosCienSentidosSecretos #TheHundredSecretSenses #AmyTan #Lee #Libros #AmoLeer #AmoLosLibros #LeerSana #MariBookClub #InstaBook https://www.instagram.com/p/CQgjbtMjU30/?utm_medium=tumblr