Amy Tan is known and loved for novels like The Bonesetter’s Daughter, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Valley of Amazement, The Kitchen God’s Wife and especially The Joy Luck Club — which was a finalist in 1989 for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and adapted into a 1993 film.
Tan is also an avid birder, and its this newfound hobby that frames her latest book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, and her presentation this morning for the Chautauqua Lecture Series. Tan will speak at 10:45 a.m. this morning in the Amphitheater, discussing the wonder and awe of the natural world to continue the Week Seven theme of “Wonder and Awe: A Week Celebrating Chautauqua’s Sesquicentennial.”
The Backyard Bird Chronicles is a departure from the fictional books she is known for. The book is an autobiographical tale of her newfound hobby of birding (and bird illustrating) that has helped her understand the natural world around her.
In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Tan said that she began drawing birds as a way to get out of her mind and into nature after feeling heavily impacted by racism in 2016.
To draw felt “like a reset for the world” at the time, away from the despair she felt at the world around her.
“And instead, here I was in nature. And it was beautiful. It was in the moment,” she said on NPR. “And what better antidote to be in a place of biodiversity as opposed to hatred of diversity?” She’s since become an avid birder.
In the interview with NPR, Tan said that she only draws birds from her own backyard and that every bird she has drawn is a bird who has looked directly at her. In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Tan recounts many experiences of surprisingly personal, intimate and trusting encounters with the birds that occupy her backyard.
What began as a series of personal journal entries documenting her passion for and knowledge of birds throughout the course of learning to draw them eventually evolved into the full book, though Tan did not originally intend to publish her journals. Humorous and heartfelt, Tan not only documents her progressing knowledge of birding, but provides an emotional account of her newfound captivation by her backyard companions.
Now, Tan serves on the board of the American Bird Conservancy, in addition to the boards of the National Poetry Series and The Community of Writers. In addition to today’s lecture chronicling her birding experiences, Tan’s nature journals and bird portraits are on view now through Aug. 25 at the Roger Tory Peterson Institution in Jamestown, New York.
Tan last spoke at Chautauqua in 2008, during a week of conversations with author Roger Rosenblatt. Even then, she was interested in the natural world, and told Daily reporter Kristin Baldwin that she and her husband were working on building an “earth-friendly home” in San Diego — “there will be a meadow of wildflowers and drought-resistant plants on the top of the roof,” Tan said in 2008.
“When I started the Chronicles,” Tan wrote in her latest book, “I could recognize only three birds in my yard. What I did not lack was intense curiosity, and I have had that in abundance since childhood. That is also when my love of nature began. It was my refuge from family chaos.”
In her book, Tan described her drawing classes led by John Muir Laws — no relation to John Muir — as not strictly being about the technical aspects of drawing.
“If anything, they had just as much to do with being curious, allowing us to return to childhood wonderment, when everything was seen as new,” Tan wrote. “That was the focus for beginning our drawings. To wonder in depth, to notice, to question. Among the many things I learned from Jack, and probably the most important to me, is this: ‘As you look at the bird, try to feel the life within it.’ For me that meant ‘Be the bird.’ ”
