Today I'm going to call Amy Tan. I fell in love with her a long time ago when her first book, The Joy Luck Club came out.

I read it right away in 1989 and I was utterly astonished and astounded by the lives she wrote about in those pages, and especially the dynamics between the mother and the daughter in that book really moved me deeply.

Amy Tam is also the author of The Valley of Amazement, the Kitchen God's wife, and other books.

Most recently, she wrote a memoir called Where the Past Begins.

It's about her life as a writer and also about her family history and how it has been brought to bear on her on her life.

I'm going to give her a call. The You're going to. Hello Amy yes.

Yes.

Hi this is Cheryl.

Hi.

Hi Cheryl.

Oh, it's so nice to hear your voice. Good to hear you too. So where are you right now? Where am I calling you? You are calling me in my home in Sausalito. So you're socially isolating with your husband. Is that right?

Your husband Lou? My husband, yes. My husband and two dogs. We are in this house I feel very very lucky actually to be here in this

particular house which I actually built with the idea that one day we'd be old and not be able to go out and what would I need to feel

like it was okay to be sequestered in a way, you know, from the world.

And what did that turn out to be?

What is your house like?

And what can you see from your windows?

It's like a tree house, and it's surrounded by oak trees and windows all on three sides of this great room that I'm sitting in

Everything is ADA compliant so if I would be in a wheelchair, I could go anywhere. The bathrooms are all sliding doors, the entries outside, you know, so it's it's all set up for getting old and I hope I

get old but what I see I see oak, but the main thing I see is Angel Island, which is I see the bay, I see San Francisco Bay,

raconstrates, Sausalito Harbor, but in the middle of all that is Angel Island. Do you know what

Angel Island is? Do you know what's history? I want to say that there was it a place

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