After nearly six years, writer Amy Tan delivers her long-awaited work, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. A mixture of grief and memory, beauty and excavation, Tan creates a tale of old China and contemporary California, woven through the intricate world of mothers and daughters.
Ruth Young lives in San Francisco as a ghostwriter, unsatisfied in her home life and struggling to – literally – find her voice. Luling is her Chinese mother – who once dramatic and sharp, is beginning to quickly lose her memory. But before the past entirely disappears, Ruth discovers Luling’s already finished memoir – the first line: “These are the things I should not forget.” Set in the village where Peking Man is being unearthed, webbed between ghosts and curses, marriage and war, Luling’s past comes to surface.
And in between the pages, lies the pivotal character of Precious Auntie – a woman who puts both Ruth and Luling on a search for identity, family and love.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Amy Tan, Author