Meeting Amy Tan

ABC TV has a lovely culture show One Plus One where the presenter interviews her guest. Tonight it was the turn of the US Chinese writer Amy Tan.

Here in Sydney, we have all been living the day after a dreadful siege. A mentally unbalanced Iranian man had held up 17 hostages in a chocolate cafe; he was universally described as unbalanced, yet his scam was to present himself as a spiritual healer, during his sessions of sweet, silent thought he molested his women patients. He was out on bail, having been charged with these sexual offences. It helps to remember that he escaped from the Ayatollah regime in Iran, where chastity police raped women on the streets and those who were unwilling were arrested and casually hanged from cherry pickers in the public square. Likewise gay men were arrested and hanged. I wove a carpet which illustrated this theme. The outcome is that many Iranian refugees will remain indefinitely damaged.

So, like other Sydney siders I was recovering, trying to get back to normal. I watched One Plus One. Amy Tan started to tell the horrible story of her mother’s escape from communist China. At the end of the interview, she was in tears, telling how her mother died, with a deathbed apology for having hurt her. “Tis an understanding dearly to be wished. She was in tears & apologised to the presenter (for being unprofessional); in turn the presenter apologised for having made such an extraordinary demand. Amy Tan described bribing, (she was talking ironically) her nieces so that they would come visit. I liked that idea. She also described having recently been epileptic, a condition I’m familiar with.

Then I realised that although I have never read an Amy Tan, the works of many women writers are on my bedside table: Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Barbara Pym, the wonderful Nancy Mitford. I think gay & women artists have much in common.