“One relative felt that the story of my grandmother should not have been revealed. My grandmother was the woman (in The Kitchen God's Wife) who had been raped, forced to be a concubine, and finally killed herself. My mother, though, got equally angry at the relative and said, "For so many years, I carried this shame on my back, and my mother suffered, because she couldn't say anything to anybody." And she said, "It's not too late; tell the world, tell the world what happened to her."”

— Amy Tan

And I take her mandate to be the one that is in my heart, the one that I should follow.
SALON Interview (1995)

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Amy Tan 89

American novelist 1952

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