6．
●Ms Tan, you’ve referred to your new novel as your
eighth book.
That’s because it took me six or seven attempts at a
second novel before I started and completed this one.
●Why do you think you had so many false starts?
I would say that my reasons were wrong. I was trying
to prove that I wasn’t just a mother-daughter storyteller, or I was trying to
prove that I didn’t just have to write about things that were strictly Chinese
or Chinese-American. Those were never the right reasons for writing those early
stories. And I could never come up with other better reasons for continuing
them.
●What kept you going on this book?
This book was different because it was based on my
mother’s real life. The reason for writing it became more personal and
emotional. After The Joy Luck Club came out, my mother was always
explaining to people that she wasn’t any of the mothers in that book. And at
one point she said to me, “Next book tells my true story.” And then she started
telling me things I never knew before. She also told me many, many stories,
because my mother doesn’t generalize(笼统地表达). The
book really grew out of that.
●Have you ever visited China?
Yes. I’ve been there twice: about three years ago and
then again last November, both times with my mother and my husband.
●Was it difficult to understand the Chinese-American
dialect(方言) without sounding like a parody(拙劣的模仿)?
No, because it’s the language I’ve heard all my life
from my mother. She speaks English as it’s direct translation from Chinese. But
it’s more than that. Her language also has more imagery than English.
●Can you think of an example?
Somebody might say to me, “Don’t work so hard. You’ll
kill yourself.” My mother will say to me，“Why do you
press all your brains out on this page for someone else？” So it’s very vivid. That’s the way she talks.
●Have many readers told you that the Chinese mother in
your book reminded them of the typical Jewish (有癖好的)
mother?
Many people have told me that. I think the
mother-daughter relationship is very intense(紧张) in
both cases. Culturally there is an acceptance that mothers have the power to
tell their children, especially their daughters, how to conduct their lives ---
not simply up until the time they are 18, but for the rest of their lives.
However, when children grow up in a different culture from their parents’，they tend to keep more secrets from their parents. The
children think, “They just wouldn’t understand that I had to do this.” And that
can really create a gap, and it can grow as the number of secrets grows.
1.Based on the questions in this interview, what do
you think Ms Tan’ s profession is?
A．A journalist.
B．A
story-writer. C．An interviewer.
D．An
interviewee.
2.What’ s TRUE about Tan’ s second book?
A．It’ s about her real life in America.
B．The name of
the book is The Joy Luck Club.
C．It is the
result of many times of carefull thought.
D．It includes
many works of her mother.
3.Which question is NOT answered in the interview?
A．How does she
think of her mother’ s language?
B．How many
books does she plan to write?
C．When did she
visit China?
D．How is
generation gap created?
4.We can infer that________.
A．Tan’ s mother is a good storyteller
B．Tan plans to
write another book about her mother
C．Tan plans to
return to China
D．Tan’ s mother is hard to communicate with because of
personality
5.The last paragraph mainly talks about________.
A．how to keep
secrets from parents
B．how to deal
with the mother-daughter relationship
C．how to
conduct the lives
D．how the
generation gap comes about