Amy Tan Chinese Quotations

I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.

Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world

Only two kinds of daughters, she shouted in Chinese. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!

And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.

I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture.

At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.

Chinese artists have been subversive over thousands of years, taking what they think of the government and embedding it in their art. There might be censorship of not going as far as they might.