In 1949, Amy Tan’s mother boarded one of the last ships heading from Shanghai to San Francisco before “China became Red China and the bamboo curtain descended.” There, her mother reunited with her husband and the couple relocated to Oakland, where a couple of years later she was born.

As a child, she knew little more about China than an “American pastiche of stereotypes,” and that some of her family had been lucky enough to make it out, while others had not. For years she organized her thinking around those divisions, until revelations about her family and the country her parents fled broke them down.

Below are excerpts from correspondence with Ms. Tan, 61, whose latest novel is “The Valley of Amazement,” about how her relationship with China changed over time.

Q. What were your earliest thoughts about China?



A. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I thought of China as a prison that everyone wanted to escape. My parents considered themselves lucky that they were able to leave before 1949. Other family members were not quite as lucky and wound up in Formosa — that’s what we called Taiwan in those days. They sent us letters that described hard work and lack of proper food, hygiene and clothing. In their photos, they looked shockingly weathered and shiny with sweat. We received no letters from China and prayed for those silent ones whose whereabouts were unknown. If America was heaven, Formosa would be limbo, and China would be hell.