The Valley of Amazement [Excerpt]

by Amy Tan (USA)

At the age of eight, I was determined to be true to My Self. Of course, that made it essential to
know what My Self consisted of. My manifesto began the day I discovered I had once possessed
an extra finger in each hand, twins to my pinkies. My grandmother had recommended that the
surplus be amputated before leaving the hospital, lest people think there was a familial tendency
toward giving birth to octopuses.

Mother and Father were Freethinkers, whose opinions were based on reason, logic, deduction, and
their own opinions. Mother, who disagreed with any advice my grandmother had to give, said:
“Should the extra fingers be removed simply to enable her to wear gloves from a dry goods
store?” They took me home with all my fingers in place. But then an old family friend of my
father’s, Mr. Maubert, who was also my piano teacher, convinced them to turn my unusual hands
into ordinary ones. He was a former concert pianist, who, early in his promising career, lost his
right arm during the siege of Paris by the Prussians. “There are only a few piano compositions for
one hand,” he said to my parents, “and none for six fingers. If you intend for her to have musical
training, it would be a pity if she had to take up the tambourine due to lack of suitable
instruments.” Mr. Maubert was the one who proudly informed me when I was eight that he had
influenced the decision.

Few can understand the shock of a little girl learning that part of her was considered undesirable
and thus needed to be completely removed. It made me fearful that people could change parts of
me, without my knowledge and permission. And thus began my quest to know which of my many
attributes I needed to protect, the whole of which I named scientifically “My Pure Self-Being.”

In the beginning, the complete list comprised my preferences and dislikes, my strong feelings for
animals, my animosity toward anyone who laughed at me, my aversion to stickiness, and several
more things I have now forgotten. I also collected secrets about myself, mostly what had wounded
my heart, and the very fact that they needed to be kept private was proof of My Pure Self-Being. I
later added to my list my intelligence, opinions of others, fears and revulsions, and certain nagging
discomforts, which I later knew as worries. A few years later, after I stained my undergarments,
Mother explained to me “the biology that led to your existence”—the gist of which was my
beginning as an egg slipping down a fallopian tube. She made it sound as if I had been a mindless
blob and that upon entry into the world I took on a personality shaped through my parents’
guidance.