What Amy Tan, Misandrist Hero, Has For Breakfast

There’s a good boy. Now bring me chicken cacciatore at once.

Last night, while ensconced in my car, I caught the last twenty minutes of an NPR interview with Amy Tan from this last December. Friends, I thought I knew Amy Tan. I knew Amy Tan, beloved and bestselling novelist. I knew Amy Tan, prominent sufferer of Lyme disease. But I did not know Amy Tan like I know Amy Tan now: as a misandrist hero.

It came up casually — how easily I might have missed it. The interviewer asked Amy about what it was like, building a new home and writing a novel at the same time, and they chatted about the details amiably, when Amy mentioned that her husband brings her three meals a day — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — into her office while she works. Every day. All three meals. At her request.

Amy Tan is a misandrist hero.

Perhaps a particularly strong-willed woman could get two tray-brought meals out of her spouse every day. I do not know; I live in glorious solitude, like a witch, and I eat when I please. But it seems to me that the average husband would at least desire his wife’s company at dinner. Not so in the house of Amy Tan. Her husband brings her dinner at her writing desk and then melts into the woodwork, like the ghost of Jeeves.

Every morning she tries to outwit him, to request a meal that he cannot bring, but he has never failed her in their many years of marriage. The neck of a white wolf. Three plums floating in a decanter of aged brandy. Limited edition Cinnamon Toast Crunch-flavored Eggo mini waffles. Regret and the smell of ginger. He finds them all, and he brings them to her, and she eats them.

[Image via Achievement.org]