Fwd: [SSRI-Research] Amy Tan article in Boston Post-lyme

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JustSayNo

Sat, 06 Dec 2003 16:13:37 -0500

[sSRI-Research] Amy Tan article in Boston Post-lyme

 

Author reveals life challenges in 'The Opposite of Fate'

 

When teenaged Amy Tan would not break up with a drug-dealing boyfriend, her

mother was so desperate she held a meat cleaver to her daughter's throat. "

 

She was on the brink, " Tan said during an interview in Boston last week.

" She had just lost it. If I had said one thing wrong - 'Do it! Just do it. I

hate you.' - she might have killed me. "

 

Fortunately for her - and for millions of readers - the teenager gave in.

" I told her, 'I want to live,' " said Tan, who went on to write " The Joy Luck

Club, " a bestseller about Chinese mothers and their first-generation

American daughters, and other books.

 

Tan repressed the memory of her mother's fury for 25 years, but she

reveals it now in her new book, " The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings "

(Putnam, $24.95).

 

The new book is a collection of writings Tan penned throughout her life.

The earliest piece, " What the Library Means to Me, " was written when she was

just 8 years old. The most recent reveals the challenges 51-year-old Tan faces

as a victim of Lyme disease.

 

Because it was not diagnosed until after it had progressed to her brain,

Tan's case of Lyme disease has been especially debilitating. Before she was

finally treated effectively, she said she experienced disorientation,

disorganized thinking, " paralysis of thought " and some hallucinatory episodes.

 

The hallucinations were particularly unsettling when she was away from

home. Because she has been stalked, Tan needed to be alert to movements around

her, especially when she was staying at hotels. What was real and what was an

hallucination?

 

" For three years, I couldn't go out on my own, " Tan said. But now she's

able to go on a book tour accompanied by a pair of diminutive protectors. Two

Yorkshire terriers, Bubba and Lily, are trained to scout out her hotel room on

the calmly spoken command, " Find bin Laden. "

 

Though Tan said she has no intention of becoming " a poster geek for Lyme

disease, " she has earmarked speaker fees from this tour for the Lymeaid 4 Kids

fund. She hopes her essay in the new book will help others who have the disease

to find earlier and more effective treatment.

 

She also hopes the book will help humanize her in the eyes of fans who've put

her on a pedestal. She writes about her mixed feelings on discovering she was

the subject of a CliffNotes booklet, her frightening experience during a

mudslide and her comical efforts at learning to sing with the literary rock band

The Rock Bottom Remainders (band members included Stephen King, Barbara

Kingsolver and Dave Barry among others).

 

Finally, Tan does not disappoint those who turn to this book for more

about the mother-daughter bond. In writing about her mother succumbing to

Alzheimer's disease, Tan tells how the older woman, who had lost the power to

say more than two words at a time, suddenly " spoke frantically: 'I know I did

something to hurt you ... I hope you can forget, just as I've forgotten.' "

 

Tan told her mother not to worry. " My mother died six months later, " Tan

writes. " By then, she had bequeathed to me her most healing words...

Together we knew in our hearts what we should remember, what we can forget. "