The Backyard Bird Chronicles

by Amy Tan

Drawing requires you to absorb details and then to combine them into a simplified and unified whole.

The ability to recognize and remember patterns—one event or fact being associated with another—is a basic survival adaptation.

The sketches and words are a record of my life. They contain what puzzled me, thrilled me, what made me laugh and also grieve. They are like the scar on my knee when I was a child in nature.

I wonder if the crows were mourning their fallen member. Given so many had flown in from all directions to join the mourning (or lynch mob), the fake crow must have resembled a much-loved muckity-muck member of the tribe. Would they mourn a crow they didn’t know? Humans do. I have, for the victims of 9/11, for children shot in schools, for fictional characters no less real than a fake crow.

Such heartbreak comes with love and imagination.