This book review appeared in the Summer 2022 Issue of Outlook by the Bay
Yin Eyes: A Review of Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses
by Steve Bailey
"My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes," Olivia
Bishop says in the first line of Amy Tan's novel, The Hundred Secret Senses. It
spawned curiosity in me right away. What are yin eyes? What would one see with
yin eyes? I know yin to be the counterpart to yang in the Tai Chi symbol, which
appears as a tattoo on some people's body parts. In the yin-yang duality, yin
is the dark one, not evil dark like Darth Vader's dark side, but yang, the
light one's, opposite. They are night and day, or life and death.
With her yin eyes, Kwan Li can see into the world of yin
inhabited by the spirits of past lives. An Amy Tan invention, the world of yin,
sounds like the Catholic purgatory but without the purging.
I like stories with parallel plots, and Kwan Li's yin eyes
make that possible. She can see and hold conversations with ghosts in the world
of yin. I thought of the nine-year-old
boy Cole Sear in the movie The Sixth Sense, but the two stories are vastly
different. Kwan doesn't just see random dead people; she sees the ghosts of
people from her former life when she was Nunumu, a servant girl in
nineteenth-century China. The stories of her experiences with these people in
her previous existence unfold as Kwan tells them to her younger half-sister,
Olivia.
Olivia narrates The Hundred Secret Senses beginning with
Kwan's arrival from China to the San Francisco Bay area. She finds her older
half-sister's fractured English and penchant for talking to the ghosts in
Chinese late into the night annoying. But no matter how mean Olivia behaves
toward Kwan, the latter always maintains a cheerful and optimistic disposition.
Olivia becomes a professional photographer and marries a
journalist named Simon. The typical American solution, divorce, looms when the
relationship becomes strained. Kwan, believing that Olivia and Simon are
reincarnations of lovers who she, as Nunumu accidentally separated, makes
saving her half-sister's marriage her mission of reclamation. She convinces the
couple to join her on an excursion to her hometown, Changmian.
The author invented the village of Changmian, and its
description shows that Amy Tan studied life in rural China closely. The
appellation means "eternal sleep." Changmian serves as the setting
for the ghosts Kwan sees with her yin eyes and where the novel reaches its
climax as the two stories intersect. There Olivia uncovers evidence that
validates Kwan's stories, and the restoration of her marriage begins.
Amy Tan's writing is rich with description and emotion. The
dark and haunting countryside surrounding Changmian fits the ambiance of a
story with ghosts and adds to the dramatic tension near the end of the book.
The engaging plots in The Hundred Secret Senses make it a page-turner. Tan
endowed her protagonist with empathetic characteristics and internal strength.
A reader's fondness for Kwan happens early and remains robust throughout. Her
yin eyes are not the only thing that makes her special.
I read The Hundred Secret Senses during my Amy Tan reading
spree, initiated to keep me grounded during our global pandemic. It became my
favorite of her novels.