Amy Tan is an American writer who began her writing journey in 1986 when her first story was published. By 1989, she published a world-famous novel known to millions as “The Joy Luck Club.” The story entails three connected stories that spent a solid 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. By 1993, “The Joy Luck Club” became a successful film and has since been adapted into a play. Tan has written six novels in total, as well as three children’s books, and eight non-fiction books. One of those non-fiction books is “The Backyard Bird Chronicles.”
“The Backyard Bird Chronicles,” published in April 2024, is a journal of sorts that explores the surrounding beauty of the world of birds. The route to this book began in 2016 as the author became increasingly despairing of the world of social media that spawned open hatred, spread disinformation, and has contributed to foment discord and division among the people of the world. Tan directed her sights away from this growing noise and instead focussed on the beauty of nature surrounding us.
Tan paid closer attention to her backyard and began to write about the nature that calmed her. She drew sketches and incorporated them into a cohesive collection of entries. These entries detailed her transformation and astute observation of nature, especially birds. As she wrote and spent more quality time, she paid deeper attention to the many species of birds that she encountered. She wrote of her joy at feeding a hummingbird from her hand. She noted every bird that flew within her sight and wrote details of their behavior patterns.
A Backyard Story
Critics around the world speak warmly of the 320-page book. What began as a simple journal of the birds within the world of Amy Tan’s backyard, became a soulful book of intense beauty in prose and observation. Her ability to poetically transform her interactions into a book of astute viewpoints is the bedrock of “The Backyard Bird Chronicles.”
One such journal passage recounts a childhood hope of gaining the complete trust of an avian visitor. Having placed several hummingbird feeders out, she watched silently as a male hummingbird arrived, inspected the feeder and its offerings, left, and return again and again until it began to trust what the feeder offered. Not long afterward, she returned to the table, took food out for birds and was surprised to hear the hummingbird nearby. She picked up a small hummingbird feeder, held it out in her hand, and soon the hummingbird was feeding from it. She had gained the trust of the wild bird.
In another entry, Tan, with her heavily penciled script and her colorful drawings, ends the entry with a heartfelt “I am in LOVE.” Her observation even extends to the sickness of a bird, and to that of birds not seen before.
“The Backyard Bird Chronicles” is a New York Times bestseller that delivers a vastly different view of birds, the excitement of them, the way they eat, and many other things. It also blends those observations uniquely into the human experience.