The Joy Luck Club and waving goodbye

So I finished book three.  Epic fail on my part, this has been going on for a month, and I can't even keep up with a book a week.  My life is all over the place right now, and my memoirs class is making it more apparent.  My theme for my writing is 'adult experiences,' which is not anything I wanted to write about, but it is what I seem to have fallen into.  There are things I'm writing about that don't have the distance I need to really reflect back, but even though it went on my "DO NOT WRITE" list, they are fighting to come out.

It's amazing the things we will put in writing or down on paper and share with complete strangers.  The 4 other members of the class and my professor have learned things about me and heard stories from my life that not even my close friends necessarily know.  And isn't that the way with literature, fiction or non?  As authors, interior thoughts are recorded for all to see.  If it isn't memoir or autobiography, it still comes from something deep inside of a writer.  All novels are, in a way, insanely personal.

The Joy Luck Club is obviously a huge part of Amy Tan's actual experience as a Chinese-American.  The story revolves around 4 mothers and 4 daughters and is told through each of their perspectives, alternating chapters and sharing life experiences.  The parallels between the mothers and daughters is something the children aren't sure they want to experience, but there is a mutual understanding and love throughout it.

[it's very hard to concentrate right now, because Tyson is snoring his doggie snores from Matt's room, and it's RIDICULOUSLY loud]

There are some stories that I enjoyed more than others, but one of the most touching moments in the story comes toward the end.  The premise of the novel is that one of the women has died and her daughter is taking her place at the Joy Luck Club meetings, bringing her into a world she doesn't truly know.  She learns that her mother had twin baby girls when she lived in China, and had to leave them on the side of the road with all of her money and jewelery when the Japanese invaded.  These girls are still alive, but do not know that the mother has just recently died. 

At the airport when Jing-mei is preparing to leave her father's side of the family in China and go to her half-sisters, she comments on goodbye's:

"And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world.  Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again.  Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will.  Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before I have a chance to know her better" (286).

So I got to thinking about good-byes.  At the end of The House on Mango Street there is a story called "Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes" and it's about how you never really leave a place (or a person) behind.  When we say goodbye to someone, do we ever really mean goodbye?  If we aren't physically leaving them, but are emotionally leaving them instead, is it really goodbye?  Or is it just the only thing we have left to do or to say?  Even when someone dies, is it really goodbye?  If someone lives on in memory, it isn't the last we think of them, or have them in our lives.

The purpose of literature is to connect and explore and question, but is it also to preserve?  We take photos and keep journals in order to remember our life experiences.  Is literature simply a way for authors to preserve their life experiences, just told through a more comfortable and convenient medium?

Would I be better off writing my memoirs into a piece of fiction, or is it the truth of my experiences that makes it easy to write?

In any case, The Joy Luck Club was wonderful.  And I need to step up my game.  Next on my list? I might try The Tipping Point, work some non-fiction into my list.  I decided against Memoirs of a Geisha.  Too much Asian culture at once might make me go crazy.