Amanda Roberts's Blog, page 4
April 30, 2025
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
In The Valley of Amazement, Amy Tan returns to familiar themes of mother-daughter bonds, cultural identity, and the enduring scars of separation, but she does so on an epic, sweeping scale. Spanning over forty years and two continents, this novel is as much a saga of survival as it is a deeply personal exploration of love, betrayal, and the search for belonging.
The story centers on Violet, the American daughter of a Chinese courtesan, who is raised in a Shanghai courtesan house at the turn of the 20th century. When she is forcibly separated from her mother, Violet is thrust into a life she never chose, trained to become what she once viewed from the safety of her mother’s world. Her journey is harrowing — filled with loss, resilience, and slow, hard-earned self-understanding.
Tan’s narrative shifts between Violet’s voice and that of her mother, Lulu, later in the novel, and this dual perspective offers a fuller picture of the generational echoes of trauma and longing. Their stories, though separated by time and geography, mirror one another in poignant, painful ways.
As always, Tan’s prose is rich with historical and cultural detail. She brings to life the opulence and danger of Shanghai’s courtesan culture with empathy, nuance, and unflinching honesty. The novel also explores themes of identity — particularly mixed-race identity — with a sensitivity that adds depth to Violet’s search for self.
Though at times the pacing lingers, The Valley of Amazement rewards patient readers with a deeply moving portrait of women navigating a world that constantly tries to define them. It is a novel of pain and beauty, abandonment and reunion — and ultimately, of the enduring bond between mothers and daughters, even when all seems lost.
Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement is a sweeping, evocative epic of two women’s intertwined fates and their search for identity, that moves from the lavish parlors of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese village.
Spanning more than forty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement resurrects pivotal episodes in history: from the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty, to the rise of the Republic, the explosive growth of lucrative foreign trade and anti-foreign sentiment, to the inner workings of courtesan houses and the lives of the foreign “Shanghailanders” living in the International Settlement, both erased by World War II.
A deeply evocative narrative about the profound connections between mothers and daughters, The Valley of Amazement returns readers to the compelling territory of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. With her characteristic insight and humor, she conjures a story of inherited trauma, desire and deception, and the power and stubbornness of love.
The post The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
In Saving Fish from Drowning, Amy Tan takes a sharp turn from her usual mother-daughter themes to explore cultural misunderstanding, Western privilege, and the line between truth and illusion — all through the lens of dark comedy and surreal adventure.
The novel follows a group of American tourists on a guided art and culture tour through Burma (Myanmar), narrated posthumously by their would-be guide, Bibi Chen. After Bibi’s mysterious death, the group continues the journey without her — only to vanish in the Burmese jungle and be mistaken for religious figures by an isolated tribe.
Tan’s storytelling here is bold and experimental. The choice to have Bibi narrate from beyond the grave adds layers of irony and commentary that underscore the novel’s exploration of perception versus reality. Bibi is a clever, acerbic observer, offering insights into the absurdities of both East and West — and how often one misreads the other.
While Saving Fish from Drowning is more satirical than Tan’s earlier work, it still wrestles with deeply human questions: how do we make meaning out of chaos? How do stories shape our understanding of the world — and how easily can they mislead us?
At times, the novel’s sprawling structure and large cast can feel unwieldy, but Tan’s wit, cultural insight, and philosophical depth make the journey worthwhile. She invites readers to question their assumptions, laugh at their blind spots, and consider the price of good intentions.
Saving Fish from Drowning is part ghost story, part political fable, and part moral inquiry. It’s a departure for Amy Tan — more satirical and surreal than sentimental — but still driven by her trademark intelligence, empathy, and narrative risk-taking.
San Francisco art patron Bibi Chen has planned a journey of the senses along the famed Burma Road for eleven lucky friends. But after her mysterious death, Bibi watches aghast from her ghostly perch as the travelers veer off her itinerary and get bogged down by cultural gaffes, tribal curses, and romantic desires. On Christmas morning, the tourists cruise across a misty lake and disappear.
With a façade of Buddhist illusions, magician’s tricks, and light comedy, even as the absurd and picaresque spiral into a gripping morality tale, Saving Fish from Drowning deftly explores the consequences of intentions—both good and bad—and the shared responsibility that individuals must accept for the actions of others.
The post Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan is a beautifully layered novel about memory, identity, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. Tan once again proves her mastery in weaving past and present, myth and memory, into a poignant story that resonates across generations.
The novel follows Ruth, a Chinese American ghostwriter living in San Francisco, and her aging mother, LuLing, whose memory is beginning to slip away. When Ruth discovers a manuscript written by LuLing in Chinese, she sets out to translate her mother’s story — and in doing so, uncovers a life of tragedy, resilience, and buried truth that spans from a remote Chinese village to the hills of California.
LuLing’s story, revealed in the middle section of the novel, is especially captivating. As she recounts her upbringing, the mystery of her “Precious Auntie,” and the deep losses she endured, we begin to understand the roots of her pain — and how it shaped Ruth’s life, even in silence. Tan gives voice to the women of the past with compassion and grace, honoring their strength without ignoring their wounds.
What makes The Bonesetter’s Daughter so moving is its exploration of how unspoken trauma is passed down through generations. Tan handles this theme with sensitivity, showing how storytelling can become a path to understanding and healing. The novel is not only about uncovering truth, but about reclaiming it — and finding connection through it.
Rich in cultural detail and emotional insight, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is a haunting, hopeful novel that speaks to the universal desire to be seen, heard, and remembered. It is a tribute to the strength of women, the legacies they leave behind, and the fragile, fierce bonds between mothers and daughters.
Ruth Young and her widowed mother have always had a difficult relationship. But when she discovers writings that vividly describe her mother’s tumultuous life growing up in China, Ruth discovers a side of LuLing that she never knew existed.
Transported to a backwoods village known as Immortal Heart, Ruth learns of secrets passed along by a mute nursemaid, Precious Auntie; of a cave where dragon bones are mined; of the crumbling ravine known as the End of the World; and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal. Within the calligraphied pages awaits the truth about a mother’s heart, secrets she cannot tell her daughter, yet hopes she will never forget. . . .
Conjuring the pain of broken dreams and the power of myths, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit: the past, its deepest wounds, and its most profound hopes.
The post The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
April 29, 2025
The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
Winnie and Helen have kept each other’s worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past—including the terrible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie’s story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events that led to Winnie’s coming to America in 1949. The Kitchen God’s Wife is “a beautiful book” (Los Angeles Times) from the bestselling author of novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Backyard Bird Chronicles, and the memoir, Where the Past Begins
Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife is a powerful and emotionally layered novel that explores the hidden histories mothers carry and the complicated bonds they share with their daughters. At its heart, this is a story about survival, secrets, and the enduring strength of women across generations and continents.
The novel centers on Winnie Louie, a Chinese immigrant living in San Francisco, and her American-born daughter, Pearl. When Pearl learns a long-buried family secret, Winnie is finally compelled to tell her the full story of her past — a journey that takes readers back to pre-World War II China, through an abusive marriage, the chaos of war, and the painful choices that shaped her life.
Tan’s gift for storytelling is on full display here. Through Winnie’s voice, she brings history to life with vivid detail, emotional resonance, and moments of quiet grace. The contrast between the two women — one shaped by tradition and trauma, the other by modern American values — provides a rich exploration of the cultural and generational divides that so often exist between immigrant parents and their children.
But more than a novel about cultural identity, The Kitchen God’s Wife is about truth — the burden of silence, the power of confession, and the healing that can begin when stories are finally shared. It asks us to consider how much of our mothers’ past lives remain unknown, and how understanding them can change the way we see ourselves.
Amy Tan has crafted another unforgettable story, one that is as intimate as it is epic. The Kitchen God’s Wife reminds us that beneath the surface of ordinary lives often lie extraordinary tales of endurance, sacrifice, and love.
The post The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
Set in San Francisco and in a remote village of Southwestern China, Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses is a tale of American assumptions shaken by Chinese ghosts and broadened with hope. In 1962, five-year-old Olivia meets the half-sister she never knew existed, eighteen-year-old Kwan from China, who sees ghosts with her “yin eyes.” Decades later, Olivia describes her complicated relationship with her sister and her failing marriage, as Kwan reveals her story, sweeping the reader into the splendor and violence of mid-nineteenth century China. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humor, Tan conjures up a story of the inheritance of love, its secrets and senses, its illusions and truths.
In The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan once again delves into the complexities of cultural identity, family bonds, and the invisible threads that connect past and present. With this novel, she moves beyond the dualities of East and West to explore the realms of memory, myth, and even the supernatural.
The story centers on Olivia, a Chinese American woman, and her older half-sister Kwan, who grew up in China and believes she can communicate with ghosts. From childhood, Olivia finds Kwan’s stories embarrassing and incomprehensible — tales of past lives, lost love, and ghostly whispers that seem to have no place in modern America. But as their lives intertwine and they travel to China together, Olivia is forced to confront not only her sister’s truths, but also the hidden parts of herself.
Tan’s writing here is lush and layered. She blends humor with heartbreak, realism with fantasy, and the result is a story that feels both intimate and expansive. Kwan, with her broken English and unwavering belief in “Yin people,” becomes the soul of the novel — a character who charms, frustrates, and ultimately transforms the people around her. Through Kwan’s voice, Tan raises profound questions about what we choose to believe, and how the stories we inherit shape the people we become.
The Hundred Secret Senses is less about ghosts than it is about memory, belonging, and the “secret senses” we all carry — our intuition, our longing, and our need for connection. It’s a novel that asks readers to open their minds and hearts to more than just what they see.
Deeply emotional and beautifully told, Amy Tan’s novel is a poignant meditation on love, identity, and the mysteries that live just beneath the surface of everyday life.
The post The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. United in unspeakable loss and new hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the memories that display these women’s strength, worries, and determination. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of the matriarchal ties that they believe have stymied their ability to face the uncertainties of the future.
Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is a deeply moving and intricately woven novel that explores the ties between mothers and daughters, tradition and change, memory and identity. Through the voices of four Chinese American daughters and their immigrant mothers, Tan crafts a poignant portrait of generational divides and cultural bridges, heartbreak and resilience.
The novel unfolds in interlinked stories that span continents and decades — from war-torn villages in China to the bustling streets of San Francisco. Each character brings her own history, pain, and longing to the table, but together, their narratives form a symphony of voices that reflect the complexity of family and the enduring search for self-understanding.
Tan’s writing is lyrical yet grounded, full of imagery and emotional truth. She captures not only the clash between old-world expectations and new-world realities, but also the quiet misunderstandings that often shape family relationships. The mothers, shaped by loss and sacrifice, struggle to pass on their stories and values. The daughters, born into a new world, wrestle with their identities — torn between honoring their heritage and forging their own paths.
What makes The Joy Luck Club so timeless is its emotional honesty. It doesn’t offer easy answers or tidy resolutions. Instead, it reveals how love can be tangled with silence, how trauma ripples through generations, and how storytelling becomes a bridge across time and distance.
More than a novel, The Joy Luck Club is a meditation on the things that both bind and separate us — language, culture, memory, and hope. Amy Tan’s debut remains as resonant today as it was when first published, and its exploration of family, identity, and connection continues to speak to readers across cultures and generations.
The post The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
The Full Moon Coffee Shop ≈
The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki is a gentle, whimsical escape into a world where the everyday and the otherworldly blend as smoothly as cream into coffee. Mochizuki invites readers into a quiet Kyoto café that opens only on nights of the full moon — a place where lost souls, troubled hearts, and even ghosts come seeking comfort, answers, and maybe a second chance.
What makes this novel so enchanting is its subtle emotional depth. While each chapter focuses on a different patron, recurring characters and the warm, mysterious shop owner serve as anchors, creating a sense of continuity and quiet magic. The stories are intimate and bittersweet — tales of missed connections, forgotten dreams, unspoken love, and lingering regrets. Yet each one is tinged with hope, as if the full moon itself lends a little clarity to lives shrouded in shadow.
Mochizuki’s prose is delicate and evocative, filled with the gentle rhythms of tea being poured, wind chimes tinkling, and memories resurfacing. There is a quiet wisdom in her storytelling, reminiscent of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, but with a uniquely Japanese sensibility that emphasizes healing over resolution and presence over perfection.
This is not a novel of high drama or grand plot twists. Rather, it’s a tender meditation on the small turning points in ordinary lives — and the spaces, literal and emotional, where transformation becomes possible.
The Full Moon Coffee Shop is perfect for fans of contemplative, heartwarming fiction. It’s the kind of book that leaves you feeling lighter, as though you, too, stepped out of the night and into the warm glow of a place where time slows, stories matter, and healing begins with a simple cup of coffee.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Translated from the Japanese bestseller, a charming and magical novel that reminds us it’s never too late to follow our stars.
In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they’ll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon.
This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and it seemingly appears at random.
It’s also run by talking cats.
While customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes and coffees and teas, the cats also consult their star charts, offering cryptic wisdom, and letting them know where their lives veered off course.
Every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. For a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the coffee shop’s feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. For there is a very special reason the shop appeared to each of them . . .
The post The Full Moon Coffee Shop ≈ first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki
In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they’ll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon.
This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and it seemingly appears at random.
It’s also run by talking cats.
While customers at the Full Moon Coffee Shop partake in cakes and coffees and teas, the cats also consult their star charts, offering cryptic wisdom, and letting them know where their lives veered off course.
Every person who visits the shop has been feeling more than a little lost. For a down-on-her-luck screenwriter, a romantically stuck movie director, a hopeful hairstylist, and a technologically challenged website designer, the coffee shop’s feline guides will set them back on their fated paths. For there is a very special reason the shop appeared to each of them . . .
The Full Moon Coffee Shop is a gentle, whimsical escape into a world where the everyday and the otherworldly blend as smoothly as cream into coffee. Mai Mochizuki invites readers into a quiet Kyoto café that opens only on nights of the full moon — a place where lost souls, troubled hearts, and even ghosts come seeking comfort, answers, and maybe a second chance.
What makes this novel so enchanting is its subtle emotional depth. While each chapter focuses on a different patron, recurring characters and the warm, mysterious shop owner serve as anchors, creating a sense of continuity and quiet magic. The stories are intimate and bittersweet — tales of missed connections, forgotten dreams, unspoken love, and lingering regrets. Yet each one is tinged with hope, as if the full moon itself lends a little clarity to lives shrouded in shadow.
Mochizuki’s prose is delicate and evocative, filled with the gentle rhythms of tea being poured, wind chimes tinkling, and memories resurfacing. There is a quiet wisdom in her storytelling, reminiscent of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, but with a uniquely Japanese sensibility that emphasizes healing over resolution and presence over perfection.
This is not a novel of high drama or grand plot twists. Rather, it’s a tender meditation on the small turning points in ordinary lives — and the spaces, literal and emotional, where transformation becomes possible.
The Full Moon Coffee Shop is perfect for fans of contemplative, heartwarming fiction. It’s the kind of book that leaves you feeling lighter, as though you, too, stepped out of the night and into the warm glow of a place where time slows, stories matter, and healing begins with a simple cup of coffee.
The post The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America by Yeonmi Park
After defecting from North Korea, Yeonmi Park found liberty and freedom in America. But she also found a chilling crackdown on self-expression and thought that reminded her of the brutal regime she risked her life to escape. When she spoke out about the mass political indoctrination she saw around her in the United States, Park faced censorship and even death threats.
In While Time Remains, Park highlights the dangerous hypocrisies, mob tactics, and authoritarian tendencies that speak in the name of wokeness and social justice. No one is spared in her eye-opening account, including the elites who claim to care for the poor and working classes but turn their backs on anyone who dares to think independently.
Park arrived in America eight years ago with no preconceptions, no political aims, and no partisan agenda. With urgency and unique insight, the bestselling author and human rights activist reminds us of the fragility of freedom, and what we must do to preserve it.
In While Time Remains, Yeonmi Park offers a bold and deeply personal follow-up to her first memoir, In Order to Live. Having survived the horrors of North Korea and the trauma of her escape, Park now turns her attention to the free world — particularly her new home in the United States — and reflects on the meaning of liberty, truth, and moral courage.
What makes this memoir so compelling is Park’s raw honesty. She does not simply celebrate her freedom; she questions it. In a voice sharpened by experience, she warns that the freedoms so many take for granted in the West are fragile — and often misunderstood. Drawing from her own life and observations, Park critiques what she sees as the rise of censorship, ideological conformity, and victimhood culture in democratic societies. Whether readers agree with all of her conclusions or not, it is impossible to deny the depth of her conviction.
This book is more than political commentary — it’s a continuation of Park’s emotional journey. She shares her struggles with identity, belonging, and the unexpected challenges of life in America. Through it all, she remains unflinchingly brave in speaking her truth, even when it places her at odds with popular opinion.
While Time Remains is both a memoir and a warning. Yeonmi Park’s voice is urgent, unapologetic, and necessary. Her journey from the darkness of dictatorship to the uncertainties of freedom forces readers to ask difficult questions about what it truly means to live in a free society — and what must be done to preserve it.
The post While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America by Yeonmi Park first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman’s Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom by Lucia Jang
Born in the 1970s, Lucia Jang grew up in a common, rural North Korean household—her parents worked hard, she bowed to a photo of Kim Il-Sung every night, and the family scraped by on rationed rice and a small garden. However, there is nothing common about Jang. She is a woman of great emotional depth, courage, and resilience.
Happy to serve her country, Jang worked in a factory as a young woman. There, a man she thought was courting her raped her. Forced to marry him when she found herself pregnant, she continued to be abused by him. She managed to convince her family to let her return home, only to have her in-laws and parents sell her son without her knowledge for 300 won and two bars of soap. They had not wanted another mouth to feed.
Stars Between the Sun and Moon is a searing, deeply personal account of a woman’s struggle to survive — and ultimately escape — one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Co-written with Susan McClelland, Lucia Jang’s memoir brings to light not only the cruelty of the North Korean government, but also the strength and resilience of a mother determined to protect her child at any cost.
Jang’s life in North Korea is marked by hardship from the start — poverty, hunger, imprisonment, and unimaginable abuse. Yet what sets her story apart is her unbreakable spirit. Again and again, she is betrayed by her country, by the men in her life, and by a system that punishes even the smallest acts of defiance. And yet, she persists. Her journey through prison camps, trafficking networks, and eventual flight to freedom is harrowing, but never without hope.
Jang’s voice is honest and unflinching. She doesn’t shy away from the uglier details of her past, nor does she try to cast herself as a perfect hero. Instead, she offers a raw, human portrait of survival — one that centers not only on her own life, but on her fierce love for her son.
Stars Between the Sun and Moon is not only a memoir of escape; it is a testament to the quiet power of endurance and the extraordinary courage it takes to start over. Lucia Jang’s story is both heartbreaking and inspiring — a reminder of the untold suffering that continues in North Korea, and the individuals who risk everything to break free.
The post Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman’s Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom by Lucia Jang first appeared on Amanda Roberts Writes.
