Amy Tan's bird obsession led to a new book — and keeping mealworms in her fridge
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: If you know author Amy Tan for "The Joy Luck Club," a novel about Chinese immigrant families in San Francisco, her new book, "The Backyard Bird Chronicles," might seem like a deviation. That's because she never intended to write this book. She was just trying to lose herself in nature. But soon she had pages and pages of observations and drawings.
AMY TAN: And that's what this is. It's like a spontaneous memoir, and I just didn't think that it was publishable.
FADEL: But clearly, it was. I spoke with Tan about what drove her to the birds and the delight she found looking out her window.
TAN: I tend to be an obsessive person to begin with. But one of the things I obsessed on in 2016 was the degree of racism that was being shown. And people now considered it almost their freedom of expression to say exactly what they thought about other people who were of a different race. It was people ignoring me as if I were invisible in a store - everybody else being served, but not me. It happened on an airplane not that long ago. And the first thing that comes to mind is racism.
FADEL: Yeah.
TAN: And I never had that feeling before, and it was horrible. So I needed to get it out of my mind that I would have this suspicion any time, you know, I had somebody do something rude. And I decided to go back into nature and also start learning how to draw.
FADEL: Did it help with all of this terribleness that you were feeling and experiencing?
TAN: Yes. It was like a reset for the world at the time because I was feeling so much despair that our world was turning uglier and uglier. And instead, here I was in nature, and it was beautiful. It was in the moment, and what better antidote to be in a place of biodiversity as opposed to hatred of diversity?
FADEL: Now, all of these scenes - I mean, you have these incredible drawings of California quail and golden-crowned sparrows and hummingbirds, pine siskins in different moods and health, but all of these scenes are from the bird life in your own backyard?
TAN: Every single bird in the book is from my backyard. Every bird that I've drawn is a bird that looked at me. I did use photo references for the more detailed illustrations that are in there, but the basic - you know, the sketches in there, they're all from the birds. I only write about the birds in my backyard, and that was just a decision that I made for myself, that I would make this very personal.
FADEL: You say, I'm a bit of an obsessive person. I mean, how many hours a day were you watching birds in your backyard? 'Cause you're documenting years of watching them from the time you wake up to the time you sleep.
TAN: You have to realize I have bird feeders visible from almost all of the windows in my house, and I have a lot of windows. So I was spending, I would say, on some days, 10 hours watching the birds and sketching them. I could eat right in front of the window because it was the dining room table. I was sitting and looking out on the patio where the birds were, and then I would be drawing at the same time. Now, I was learning to draw, so a lot of that time was simply drawing the same bird over and over and over again, just for the practice of it.
FADEL: You notice birds. I mean, you talked about almost getting to know them, and you also wondered what they noticed in you. Who is Amy Tan to these birds?
TAN: I suspect that they know me as the flightless creature who brings out the food. I once took away the feeders because there was an outbreak of disease that some finches had brought, and I took them all down for a very long time, and suddenly I had birds coming to the window in the bathroom. I never knew they were in the yard, and they were looking at me very intensely. These were birds I'd always wanted to see, and now here they were, coming to the window.
And I remember one of them just looked at me, an orange-crowned warbler, and then it tapped his bill on the window. And I thought, people say, oh, they're tapping it because they see their reflection, blah, blah, blah. But this was not that. When I moved to another room, it followed me and went to that window and just stared at me. And then it followed me to another window, and then, later in the day, when I opened the door, it flew in, and it just stared at me. It just perched somewhere and stared at me like, where is the food?
FADEL: I have to ask you - 'cause your husband makes a few little appearances in the book where he drives you to get some of the food for the birds, and I think at one point, you're spending $250 a month on food for the birds.
(LAUGHTER)
FADEL: What does he think about your hobby?
TAN: That's obsessive, I would say.
FADEL: (Laughter) It's obsessive.
TAN: I know. Well, not only that. I would buy these live mealworms. Sometimes, there were 20,000 of them.
FADEL: Wow.
TAN: And I would put them in containers, tons of these containers, and then I would put them in the fridge. And so when I started getting 20,000 instead of 10, Lou did say something about, you've got too many of these mealworms in here. The other thing that he was tolerant of is that sometimes I would have a dead bird. And I carefully wrap them up, put the date when they were found and what the breed was, and then I put them in the freezer to give to the California Academy of Sciences. Then I feel they're going off to, you know, a very advanced institution, and it makes me feel better, in a way, that they will serve a purpose, you know, even though they've died.
FADEL: Also, Lou really loves you.
TAN: Yeah. Lou loves it, too.
FADEL: I think that's a sign of real love.
(LAUGHTER)
TAN: We've been together for 54 years...
FADEL: Amazing.
TAN: ...So he knows me and my habits. And I've had dead snakes in the freezer in the past, so this is probably one step better.
FADEL: Par for the course.
TAN: Yeah.
FADEL: Amy Tan. Her new book is "The Backyard Bird Chronicles," and she's written and illustrated it. Thank you so much for this book and really such a joyful conversation.
TAN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF EL TEN ELEVEN'S "MY ONLY SWERVING")
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