The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan

I'm not big into non-fiction. Well, in other words it is not usually my first choice of what to read. I first became introduced to non-fiction my first two years of college because I had to read certain books: the biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglas, Jihad vs. Mcworld, and another book about surviving in America on minimum wage or something like that. I came to find that they were all really interesting and enjoyable to read.

And this one was no exception. I have not read any of Amy Tan's books even though I have wanted to read The Joy Luck Club and I loved the movie. Basically I was just going off my mother's reccommendation. It is made up of a collection of essays, speeches and stories of her life. So at times she get repetitive because she talks about the same thing in a lot of speeches but some delve more deeper than others.

This book was extremely interesting and covered a lot of different topics. Mothers and daughter relationships, friendships, dealing with medical issues in ourselves and in our loved ones, and even racism in the world of writing. Though all of these topics are serious things to consider she knows when to put in a little bit of her humor to cut the tension. One of my favorite parts was when she explains how people analyze and her books, college students write there thesis on her, not just on her books, but on her. It was so fun to hear her refute their findings. It makes you think of how complicated you look into books that you are told are great masterpieces when the author was just trying to tell a story and it's just a coincidence that patterns arise. I thought it was hilarious.

Another enjoyable part about reading this book was that I had borrowed my mother's copy so it had some lines underlined and they were quite interesting read as her daughter. For example: "My mother believed in reincarnation and she believed I was someone from her past, a woman she had obviously wronged. Why else had I come back as her daughter to torment her so?" "How could I have been so stupid not to know this all these years. It had been so simple to make my mother happy. All I had to do was say I appreciated her as my mother." Okay so that's really the only two, but I thought that it was quite funny and a little offended to read and see it underlined. Later, after I became less self-centered, I realized maybe she was looking at herself as a daughter. It's hard to think of my mother as a daughter sometimes. Not that she was one that tormented her mother or anything, but she had some sort of a relationship with her mother. Which it has recently become interesting to observe other girl's relationships with their mother and how different they all are. Amy Tan had a traumatic relationship with her mother but it ended well sort of. My mom is like my best friend and it surprises me when others don't have the same relationship.

Other quotes that my mom underlined but I liked them too and so I was just a little lazy to underline any of my own. Get off my back.

"And I guess that is the role of both an editor and a friend--to have that confidence in another person, that the person's best is natural and always possible, forthcoming after an occasional kick in the butt."

"Memory feeds imagination, and my imagination is glutted with a Thanksgiving of nightmares." I have never had the experience of a Thanksgiving nightmare, well there is the one time that I was so distraught that I missed all the gorging and I had to heat up a plate because the family couldn't wait. I had to go and cry in the pantry. It was the first time I felt like I had missed Thanksgiving. But other than that my Thanksgivings have been really pleasant but I guess others have really bad ones. I have yet to see a movie about Thanksgiving that was pleasant all the way through.

"Who would be frank enough to warn that my husband might exchange me for a younger woman unless I forced him to buy me jewels so expensive it would be impossible for him to leave both me and gems behind?"