Amy Tan Article

I thought this article was very interesting, because I think it is always interesting to know about an author's experiences in their life. I think that helps to give a good idea of what makes the author incorporate certain elements into the story. I think when I first read this book it seemed a little difficult to understand because I did not know what Mah Jongg (thank you Nijole! :)) was. That helped me a lot when I saw some of the aspects of Mah Jongg being incorporated into the story. One prime example was the use of the number four. There are four daughters in the story, and they each sit on the end of Jing-Mei's four-sided table. There are four elements, dragons and hemispheres in the game of Mah Jongg. I also found it interesting that her mother “affected her imagination” and way she did by describing different situations. For example, when she talks about how “paper plates moved at a funeral reception wafted up and down whenever your mother’s name was mentioned; or “if your phone disconnected, but only when you were talking to your mother. I thought those two really stood out and gave me an idea of where the idea of an apparition or ghost comes from.