“Saving Fish from Drowning” Amy Tan

I’ve always enjoyed Amy Tan’s works, especially her descriptions of the relationships of women and their mothers. I kept looking for new works from her and thought she had disappeared, but I read that she suffered from undiagnosed Lyme disease for years and the recovery took time. I was happy to see she had a book, “Saving Fish from Drowning,” and even more pleased to learn the premise of the book, which I know now is fictional, but I began the reading believing it was true. The writing had been channeled from a woman named Bibi Chen, a San Franciscan who had died some years before. The writing was channeled to a woman who spent many sessions recording the events described by Bibi. The author was familiar with Bibi Chen and at first thought the writing was a hoax, but the story was about the disappearance of some tourists in Myanmar and had too many details to simply be plagiarism of the news reports. The author interviewed the woman who wrote what Bibi had transmitted from the grave and wanted to write the story. The result is an interesting double view of a tour of Myanmar and clashes of cultures and personalities. I would still like to believe this premise is true, that there really was some psychic power at work, but the book is enjoyable nonetheless.

Bibi Chin planned a tour of Myanmar, which she calls Burma not wishing to relinquish the culture to the current regime. Eleven of her friends plan to join her on the trip which will retrace some of the same route Bibi believes her ancestors took as they left China. She combines her experiences as an art dealer and research on the people and places to create a thoughtful study of the impact of Chinese domination on Buddhism and culture. Entering Burma from China has been closed to Western people, and she wants to lead the first group to end that ban and to follow the Burma Road to Mandalay. Unfortunately, she dies a mysterious death before the tour and a substitute guide, anxious and unprepared, is chosen. Bibi, in spirit form, joins them and discovers that she knows what they are thinking and feeling, and thus, she is the omniscient narrator of the book. Bibi finds she can understand the thoughts and words of all the people involved, even those speaking languages she does not know, and so we are able, through Bibi, to know what is being discussed on all parts even if the characters do not.

We get a double tour of China and Burma through the eyes of the living and the dead; as she describes the thoughts and actions of the 12 members of the group, Bibi also tells us the history and culture that she had planned for them to observe and learn. There is also the typical Tan story about a woman and her mother as we learn about Bibi’s life, but we also hear the back story of many of the other characters, including the local figures. The clash of cultures and misunderstanding results in 11 of the members of the tour group taking a month-long detour.

Tan doesn’t write about characters so much as relationships. She is able to see relationships as multi-dimensional and changing, and that is what I enjoy about her writing, learning how the relationships develop over time and how each person strives to find fulfillment. However, I found the emphasis on the U.S. citizens and their trivial lives frustrating. It was as if the Karen tribesmen were simply a plot prop, and their ultimate demise as a community unimportant to the story and the lives of the principles. Is it my inherent guilt over the ills of the world that are outside of my control and the inability to resolve those ills (one of the themes of Tan’s work) that make me angry that the Karen tribesmen seem to be left for dead without so much as a by your leave. The main characters of the book have money, benefits and leisure to pursue their desires, so I can’t reconcile the importance of their lives in the book compared to a group that disappears as part of ethnic cleansing, fictional or not. If that is one of Tan’s intents, to make me angry about the inequities of our society, then she was successful, but I am more inclined to believe the people of Burma were simply a prop.

As always, when I read authors with different, often international, backgrounds than my own I am glad to learn what I didn’t know before. In the introduction to this book¾essential to understanding the plot structure¾Amy Tan talks about the research she did in writing this book. I suspect I read too many books in which I don’t learn anything and for which the author did no research. I want to thank Tan for her desire for accuracy and, except in those few places where she admits making literary rather than factual choices, authenticity. On the other hand, knowing now that the premise of the book was fictional, I wonder how much Tan manipulated the truth as she knew it, or if indeed she did the research she claimed.

I just read the New York Times book review on this book. I agreed that the subject of the Karen were treated shabbily. My personal thought was that this book was a good example of how not to behave when traveling, a sort of anti-manual for the Ugly American. While Bibi’s character was more worldly than the others, she still had a snobbish view toward other cultures. The New York Times piece said that there are many more (and better) books about misunderstandings while traveling: ‘Candide and Gulliver are the archetypes, but the form has been used unerringly by Katherine Anne Porter in "Ship of Fools," hilariously by Rose Macaulay in "The Towers of Trebizond," and recently to great humorous and philosophical effect by Jonathan Safran Foer in "Everything Is Illuminated."’

This was an audible book, and I listened to it while driving along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington. The reading by Amy Tan reminded me of two other recordings by Chute and Kingston. I am particularly fond of books read by the author, because I hope to gain additional understanding from the text by the way it is read. Readings by the author always talk me back to the first audible book I listened to, “The Beans of Egypt, Maine” by Chute read by Chute. My friend Mary had borrowed it from the library to listen to while we drove up to Canada in the summer of 1988, and it was my first audible book and opened my eyes to the possibility of combining two of my favorite activities, reading and traveling. I also loved the book--Mary did not–and have listened to it multiple times since. I’d like to say that I have never listened to a book read by the author that I did not like, but I’m sorry to say that I did not enjoy Sedaris reading his works. It could be my hearing aids, but I found his voice so annoying I had trouble paying attention to what he was reading. In addition to being reminded of books that I had listened to that were read by their authors, I also thought about Maxine Hong Kingston. The voice that Amy Tan chose for Bibi Chen reminded me of the readings I had listened to by Kingston. The rhythms weren’t quite the same, but the voice was a similar Chinese American woman’s voice, and the picture I developed for Bibi Chen was that of Kingston.