The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan

This was not my favorite Amy Tan book, but I did love it. More than any other, this focused on the mother’s story in China, and it was a wrenching one. (Usually there’s a pretty good balance between the mother and daughter generations.) Because of what I read in The Opposite of Fate, Amy Tan’s memoir of sorts, I found myself thinking of this as her own mother’s true story, which may or may not be a fair assumption. And my heart broke for this woman and all that she endured, all her suffering, the lows and — thankfully — the eventual highs. It made me wonder about my own mother, how little I know, how much she might have to tell me. Will we wait until we think it’s almost too late to finally share all our secrets with one another? Will I have to reconstruct her life in a novel in order to understand her?

Anyway, a good book. Favorite passages below. Warning: there are a lot.

And whenever I’m with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines. (p 16)

To me, ying-gai meant my mother lived a life of regrets that never faded with time. (p 29)

I think about a child’s capacity to hurt her mother in ways she cannot even imagine. (p 33-34)

I was born with good luck. But over the years, my luck — just like my prettiness — dried out, then carved lines on my face so I would not forget.

I cannot explain exactly how this happened, these changes in my life. If I try to say what happened, my story would not flow forward like a river from the beginning to the end, everything connected, the lake to the sea. If my life had been that way, one thing leading to another, then I could look back and I would know the lessons of my life: the fate that was given me, the choices I took, the mistakes that are mine. And perhaps I would still have time to change my luck. (p 62)

Still, from that day on, I began to look at everything in my life two ways, the way it happened, the way it did not. (p 68)

No one would believe me now if I said Helen is not my sister-in-law. She is not related by blood, not even by marriage. She is not someone I chose as my friend. Sometimes I do not even enjoy her company. I do not agree with her opinions. I do not admire her character. And yet we are closer perhaps than sisters, related by fate, joined by debts. I have kept her secrets. She has kept mine. And we have a kind of loyalty that has no word in this country. (p 72-73)

I loved you the most, more than Samuel, more than all the children I had before you. I would tell her, I loved you in ways you never saw. And maybe you do not believe this. But I know this is true, feel my heart. Because you broke my heart the hardest, and maybe I broke yours the same way. (p 86)

I will call her, long, long distance. Cost doesn’t matter, I will say. I have to tell you something, can’t wait any longer. And then I will start to tell her, not what happened, but why it happened, how it could not be any other way. (86)

That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love — that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more, maybe less, ten thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination — and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false. (p 89)

And how can you say luck and chance are the same thing? Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward. Your kind of chance makes no sense, it is only an excuse not to blame yourself. If you don’t take a chance, someone else will give you his luck. And if you get bad luck, then you need to take another chance to turn things from bad to good. of course everything is connected. (p 123)

Of course, you probably don’t understand this kind of thinking, how I could be in trouble for Peanut, why I was scared. In China back then, you were always responsible to somebody else. It’s not like here in the United States — freedom, independence,  individual thinking, do what you want, disobey your mother. No such thing. Nobody ever said to me,” Be good, little girl, and I will give you a piece of candy.” You did not get a reward for being good, that was expected. But if you were bad — your family could do anything to you, no reason needed. (p 132)

And we all listened as Old Aunt took a little piece of truth and stretched it in all directions. (p 141)

And I believed she was also saying that this kind of pain for a husband was true love, the kind that grew between husband and wife. I had also learned this in the movies, both Chinese and American. A woman always had to feel pain, suffer and cry, before she could feel love. And now that I was living with Wen Fu in a little monastery room in Hangchow, I suffered a lot. I thought my love was growing bigger and bigger. I thought I was becoming a better wife. (p 168)

I felt the danger, that this was how you love someone, one person letting out fears, the other drawing closer to soothe the pain. And then more would pour out, everything that has been hidden, more and more — sorrow, shame, loneliness, all the old aches, so much released until you overflowed with joy to be rid of it, until it was too late to stop this new joy from taking over your heart. (p 203)

“You only see yourself in a mirror. But I see you the way you can never see yourself, all the pure things, neither good nor bad.” (p 205)

“If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.” (p 284)

This was not love, but the danger of it. (p 307)

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently? How can you think everyone a hero, choosing death, when it is part of our nature to let go of brave thoughts at the last moment and cling to hope and life? (p 327)

We said no words. He took my hands and held them firmly. And we both stood in the road, our eyes wet with happiness, knowing without speaking that we both felt the same way.

And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don’t know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories. (p 346)

Isn’t that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That’s not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart. (p 360)

If someone offers to take your burden, you need to know he is serious, not just being polite and kind. Polite and kind do not last. (p 365)

When your mind stands still, all kinds of bad thoughts can come in. (p 378)

She had a fall-in-love feeling for him. He had a grow-in-love feeling for her. (p 384)