Amy Tan and a Love of Birding

I’m again interrupting my blog series profiling authors I personally know, this time to focus on an author I don’t personally know, Amy Tan, and her recent book The Backyard Bird Chronicles. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an avid reader, and I’ve previously spotlighted several famous authors whose works I’ve enjoyed reading: Seamus Heaney, John Kerry, Madeleine L’Engle, Anne Tyler, and Joy Harjo. I’ve also written about authors of Korean literature that I’ve enjoyed. So this post should fit right in with those previous ones.

I’ve also mentioned before that I enjoy the hobby of birding. What a great coincidence, then, that an author whose works I’ve enjoyed previously has written a book about birding! I waited what felt like a long time for my local library to have the book in circulation, but finally it was there, and I dove into the reading.

Bur first, for those who aren’t familiar with Amy Tan, here’s some background. I’ve read all of her novels to date: The Valley of Amazement, Saving Fish from Drowning, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Kitchen God’s Wife, and The Joy Luck Club, which is probably her most famous novel since it was made into a movie. All of these books are profiled on her website. She’s also written two memoirs, Where the Past Begins and The Opposite of Fate, and two children’s books, Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat and The Moon Lady, and these are also profiled on her website.

Amy Tan (Library of Congress 2020 National Book Festival/Julian Johnson)

As for The Backyard Bird Chronicles, it could be considered a type of memoir, as it recounts Amy Tan’s experience of backyard birding from September 16, 2017, through December 15, 2022. However, while a memoir tends to emphasize the author as the main focus of the book, in this book, the birds she watches take the starring role, so in that way, we could say the book is a nature guide. It’s not that simple, though, as she provides narrative descriptions not only of the bird behaviors but also of her reactions to them, so in that way, she is the medium through which we learn about the birds, placing her in a primary role and making the case to place this book in the category of memoir. Is there a genre of book called “nature guide memoir”? If so, this would fit there.

David Allen Sibley, renowned expert on birds and gifted bird illustrator, captured the complexity involved in classifying the genre of this book when he described the book this way in his foreword:

On the surface, this book is a nature journal; a collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words. Writing, like drawing, works best when it simplifies the complex, using just the essential words and phrases to show us the outline of a scene and convey an idea or a feeling, and Amy Tan, of course, is a master of that art. The drawings and essays in this book do a lot more than just describe the birds. They carry a sense of discovery through observation and drawing, suggest the layers of patterns in the natural world, and emphasize a deep personal connection between the watcher and the watched. (xi)

Whatever we call its genre, The Backyard Bird Chronicles was a pleasure to read and provided insights into both Tan and birds throughout. For example, I learned that Tan is a great visual artist in addition to a great writer. There are 34 full-page color portraits drawn by Tan included in the book (33 of birds and one of a Western Gray Squirrel, the bane of many a backyard birdwatcher for its raids on birdfeeders). In addition to these portraits, the book includes additional drawings, mostly in color, on the 91 reproduced pages from her journal, as well as 6 black-and-white sketches. That’s a lot of drawing for someone who’s known primarily as an author!

In her preface, Tan is humble about her drawing skills, noting,

I still have much I want to learn how to do, like backgrounds as context and flying birds at takeoff and landing. As is, the feather structure I’ve drawn for a number of birds would have kept real ones land bound. From my not estimating the size of birds to the size of the page, tails and wings run off the edges into the gutters….I gave the birds big cartoon eyes…. (xvii)

In my estimation, her drawings are highly skilled, especially the full-page portraits. Even the black-and-white sketches exceed anything I would be able to produce.

As for learning about birds, I found it interesting that the birds Tan writes about are all found on the US West Coast. She mentions that she and her husband live in New York and California, but the bird observations this book captures are all from her time in California. I’ve lived in Arizona, so I’ve been introduced to some of the same birds Tan focuses on in the book, but most of my birding has happened in the Upper Great Plains and the East Coast, so many of the birds she writes about in the book are not birds I’m familiar with. Nonetheless, even though their appearance in unlike birds I’m more used to, their behaviors are similar. Which birds are dominant at the feeder? Which birds take just one seed at a time from the feeder before flying off, and which sit for long spells feeding themselves? Which feed off the ground and which feed off hanging feeders? Which fly off at the first sight of a human and which watch humans curiously? The names of birds might be different, but an Anna’s Hummingbird on the West Coast seems to behave similarly to a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird on the East Coast, for example. (Speaking of hummingbirds, I never knew it was possible to feed them out of your hand as Amy Tan does!)

Tan writes about her experiences with taking nature journaling classes from John Muir Laws, which reminded me of birding classes I took through the Fargo Parks District. She writes about a then-13-year-old girl, Fiona Gillogly, who she met on the fieldtrips she took through these classes and who impressed her with her bird knowledge, which reminded me of a similarly aged boy in my Fargo Parks District birding classes who seemed to me like a bird genius. She also collects a list of birds she’s seen in her yard, which numbers 62, an activity that will be familiar to most birders. I’ve kept bird lists in many of the places I’ve lived. Some people keep life lists, a compilation of every bird seen throughout a person’s life.

Throughout the book, Tan documents the ups and downs of birding: injured birds, sick birds, the joy of seeing a previously unseen bird for the first time. She tells of shopping for birdseed and of making homemade birdfeeders. Of shooing away neighborhood cats and of trying to keep her lapdog safe from owls. Of learning to identify birdsongs. For anyone who enjoys birding, the book will be relatable, and for anyone interested in starting with birding, the book will provide an entry into the daily experiences one can expect. I highly recommend it!

Forays Into Korean Literature

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy reading. I’ve written about my love of reading literature by Anne Tyler, and I’ve focused on my enjoyment of autobiographies, including those of John Kerry and Madeleine L’Engle. Lately, I’ve been reading literature with ties to Korea. This probably isn’t surprising, given the interest I have in the country after having lived there for a year on a Fulbright grant. Ever since then, I’ve been intrigued by Korean history and culture.

One of the books I’ve read recently with a focus on Korea is Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung by Min Kym. This book is an autobiographical memoir written by a former child prodigy violinist who was born in Korea and raised in the United Kingdom. In it, she deals with her upbringing and professional career, touching on the role Korean culture played in her life and her conflicted feelings about her talent.

A major event that occurred in the book was the theft of her beloved Stradivarius violin. I had never known the intimacy of the relationship between leading violinists and their instruments, but apparently, it’s quite profound. As a result, Kym suffered from grief and loss when her violin was taken.

In the aftermath of her loss, Kym tried to raise funds to re-purchase her stolen violin. She described her feelings at that time, writing: 

What had I got to show for my life? It was gone, and had been gone for two and a half years. Meetings were mirages of hope, fading into nothing when decision time came; no one was interested. And the more you’re turned down, the more you start to panic. You start to think you’re unclean, untouchable, that there’s a mark on your head, or a placard around your neck, failure in your eyes and the way you stand. (182)

The hopelessness and despair she felt is palpable in this quotation. It seemed to her that her life was pointless and that she was displaying this pointlessness for all to see in her expression and her posture. This passage illustrates the feelings of panic she experienced as she was thrown into repeating cycles of disappointment when others denied her the ability to achieve her hopes.

How many of us have felt similar rejection and sorrow? I know I have, and this is what makes her book so relatable. Even though I’ve never been a prodigy, never played the violin, never been lauded by the world press, I can relate to her human feelings in her time of distress.

Another book with Korean ties I recently read was The Court Dancer by Kyung-Sook Shin. This book is set in the final years of the Joseon Dynasty at the end of the 19th century, and it tells the tale of an orphan girl who becomes a dancer at the royal palace. I didn’t live in the 19th century, I’ve never been an orphan, and even though I loved dance classes when I was young, I never rose to the level of being selected as an elite dancer. So, like Min Kym’s book, there are differences between me and the main character that would make it seem I couldn’t relate. However, I did.

One reason why I related to the book is its description of how one of the characters was treated despite a disability. Yi Jin, the orphaned palace dancer, was raised along with Yeon, a fellow orphan. Yeon was as close as a brother to Yi Jin, although he also harbored feelings of romantic affection for her, so when she became old enough to stay at the palace permanently, he became a daegum player in the royal palace to stay close to her (a daegum, also spelled daegeum or taegum, is a large Korean flute made of bamboo). 

Daegeum player. (Wikimedia/Badagnani)

 

Yeon was unable to speak. This perhaps could be due to the trauma he suffered in the time he roamed alone as an orphan before he was taken in by the woman who raised him along with Yi Jin, or perhaps it could be due to a congenital defect. The reason was never made clear, but no matter the reason, his disability did not affect his ability to play the daegum.

At one point in the book, the French legate to Korea, Victor, remarked to Bishop Blanc, a French Roman Catholic missionary to Korea, about Jeon’s acceptance in the royal palace. Bishop Blanc replied, “Korea’s treatment of the disabled has that in favor of the French. They do not particularly discriminate against or exclude them. Not even as royal court musicians” (134). These sentences in particular stood out to me because they resonated with an experience I had in Korea.

When I lived in Korea, I taught in a boys’ middle school. One of the boys in this school was unable to communicate verbally. He was able to grunt and laugh, but he did not form words. Yet, he was integrated into a mainstream classroom rather than placed in a special education classroom as I had seen previously in the United States.

I volunteered in the special education classroom as part of the gifted and talented program I was enrolled in when I was in elementary school. I remember helping a girl named Vicky hold her pencil while she completed addition problems on a worksheet. This girl must have been a teenager at the time, but here she was, in a classroom in the basement of an elementary school being tutored by an elementary school student. Despite how she may have felt about me (I confess I don’t know, as she didn’t speak much), I considered Vicky a friend, and I made sure to always spend some time with her when our times on the playground overlapped.

I’m not sure which system is better—integrating students with developmental delays into mainstream classes with their age group peers, or separating students with developmental delays based on their cognitive abilities. It does seem that, as Bishop Blanc suggested in the book, there could be some benefits to the integration approach when it comes to the way people with developmental differences are treated by society. On the other hand, it could be that some more specialized attention paid to that middle school boy I remember from my time in Korea could have helped him learn to communicate more effectively. What’s the right solution? I don’t know, but this book resonated with me as I pondered the situation.

I’ve read a few other books with Korean ties lately, including The Calligrapher’s Daughter and The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim. Like The Court Dancer, these are pieces of historical fiction, meaning they are fictionalized accounts of real historical periods. They are also based in the author’s family history, so while not autobiographical to the extent that Min Kym’s book is, there are also some overlaps with that literary tradition.

The Calligrapher’s Daughter tells a story of life in Korea during the Japanese occupation, which lasted from 1910 to the end of WWII, while The Kinship of Secrets focuses on the life of a family of Korean immigrants to the United States during and after the Korean War. Both of these books focus on family relationships, including generational differences; the role of women in society; and racial and ethnic tensions. Both contain themes that, despite the differences between me and the books’ characters and their circumstances, allowed me to identify with the characters’ emotions.

Next up in my reading list is Everything Belongs to Us, another piece of historical fiction by Yoojin Grace Wuertz. It tells a story of college students in Korea during the democratization movement of the 1970s. I’m hoping it’s as enjoyable as my other forays into Korean literature, of which I’ve just scratched the surface in this entry. What do you most enjoy reading?

Overloading on Negativity

Lately, it seems that everywhere I look I see negative news. While I like to think I usually maintain a realistic outlook, seeing both positives and negatives around me, these days it seems the negatives are outweighing the positives. Here’s a rundown of what I’m referring to and some strategies I’m using to cope.

Domestic Terrorism

My feelings of being overloaded by negativity began on January 6, the day the US Capitol was overrun by a violent mob trying to stop the counting of votes cast in the presidential election. Before this, I was certainly noticing lots of negative news, but I was managing to keep it in perspective, seeing positives amidst all the negativity. Unfortunately, January 6 was a turning point for the worse for me. I saw the very foundation of the United States—its democracy—being threatened, and this made me feel threatened on a personal level as well.

Why did I feel personally threatened? I think it’s because it was hard to know at that point where other people feeling the same way as those at the Capitol might strike next. I certainly didn’t feel better when a next door neighbor began flying a Trump campaign flag the next day. Would this person resort to violence the way others supporting this same cause had?

Now, several weeks later, a report has come out warning about the threat of domestic terrorism in the United States. The report states that “extremists…could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.” While the report also suggests that such violence is most likely to target elected officials and government buildings, I still feel unsafe and distrustful on a personal level. Who knows when or where the violence will strike next? And news about future attacks will be broadcast across media of all types—print, broadcast, and social—affecting everyone’s personal psyche.

COVID-19 Illness and Death

Along with the threat of more domestic terrorism in the United States, illness and death from COVID-19 is on the rise around the world. NPR keeps a running total of those who have had the illness or died from it. At the time I’m writing this, according to the tally, the world has seen over 100 million people become sick with COVID-19 and more than 2 million people die of it in the past year. These numbers are astounding.

Those of us living in the United States can be said to be seeing the worst of the disease, as NPR notes over a quarter of all cases worldwide have occurred in the United States and more deaths have happened here than in any other country. The NPR statistics show that other countries are suffering significantly as well, though. The Czech Republic has seen the highest percentage of its population become infected than any other country with a population over 1 million people, and Belgium has the highest death rate per capita.

It’s hard not to feel overloaded by negativity when death and illness are spiraling out of control across the globe. Even if one country manages to get a grip on how to stop the spread of the disease, the problem will exist until every country can put a stop to it. How likely is this? I admit I’m skeptical that it will happen any time soon.

Environmental Destruction

Last year, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology released a report that showed the North American bird population had declined by 30% over the past 50 years. I wrote a little about this study in a previous post. Now, the Associated Press has reported on a study that shows a more than 70% population decline among ocean sharks and rays between the years 1970 and 2018. According to the report, there are 31 species of sharks in the world, and 24 of them are considered threatened with extinction. Three species are considered critically endangered.

I find this news about potential extinction of so many species disheartening. Once a species is extinct, it’s a permanent loss. That species can never be replaced. The role it plays in the global biosphere will be gone forever. How will this loss impact the functioning of other species? How will it impact the survivability of our planet? These are sobering questions. 

Earth (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Along the same vein, I recently read a book by M. Jackson called The Secret Life of Glaciers that investigates a potential extinction of another kind, the global loss of glaciers. In her book, Jackson discusses the complex relationships between the people who live in Iceland and the glaciers there. She notes that while in the short term the shrinking of glaciers may have some positive effects for humanity, in the long term, the loss of all the glaciers in the world would have a negative impact. Even though she states on her website that the purpose of her book is to investigate how we might use the human-glacier relationship to save glaciers, I came away from reading the book with a sense of sadness and doom. I admit I just don’t see the will of the people of the world being directed toward saving the glaciers any time soon.

Coping

How am I coping with all this negativity? As I already mentioned, not as well as I had been before January 6. In a post I wrote early in the global pandemic experience, I listed some coping strategies that might be useful for managing stress. Here’s a rundown of the ones that have been helping me lately:

1. Taking time each day to experience nature has been most helpful. On days when the weather allows me to take a walk outside, I feel better than on days when I don’t go for a walk. On days with inclement weather, I spend some time sitting by a window, watching the birds, and observing the wind in the trees. Even though I’m noticing negative news about the environment these days, when I look out the window or step outside into nature, I feel more alert, less fatigued, and calmer.

2. Another action I’m consciously taking these days is to try to stay in the present. What can I do right now to make myself feel better? I often find reading books can help. It takes my mind off worries about the future and lets me think about whatever content the writer brings to my attention. Unfortunately, my recent book choices haven’t been overly uplifting. After finishing M. Jackson’s book about glaciers, I started reading Natalie Cole’s autobiography called Angel on My Shoulder. If I had realized the battles with addiction she faced in her life and would share with her readers, I might not have chosen this book. Nonetheless, it has at least been a distraction from negative news about domestic terrorism, COVID-19, and environmental destruction.

Another way I’m staying in the present is by doing crossword and jigsaw puzzles. These give me a break from heavy thinking and give me a sense of accomplishment when I finish them. I also watch TV, including shows like Building Alaska, which I wrote about previously. I find watching inconsequential TV shows like this allow me to suspend my critical mind and just pass the time paying attention to whatever the show is illustrating. I’ve recently started watching a series on PBS called All Creatures Great and Small which fits the bill nicely. 

3. I’m also trying to stay connected with people. I Skyped with a friend a few weeks ago, and I’ve exchanged snail mail letters with another friend. I text message with a few friends on a semi-frequent basis as well. Reminding myself that there are people out there who are willing to share their thoughts and experiences with me and who are interested in my thoughts and experiences makes me feel better. Of course, writing this blog is another way for me to keep connected with people, too.

4. One last coping strategy that’s helping me is focusing on what I can control. Lately, this has consisted of paying attention to my breathing. When I feel stressed, I notice my chest feels tight, so I take a moment to let a deep breath of air into my lungs and then let it out. I feel instantly calmer when I do this. Breathing may seem automatic, but how we breathe is something we can control.

What are some of the things you’re doing to cope with the stressful, negative time we’re living through?