The Bonesetter's Daughter

Amy Tan’s novel, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, is a robust account of mothers, daughters, and the vital role the act of writing plays in the telling of secrets and a retelling of a family’s past. The narrative itself is divided into three sections, each telling the story from a different point of view. The first is set in present-day California. Ruth’s tale, told in third person, begins with Ruth struggling to come to terms with the decay of a 10-year relationship to a man she deeply loves. Ruth finds herself struggling to come to terms with the fact that the two are growing apart. At the same time, she is forced to deal with her mother’s deteriorating mental state. As her mother begins exhibiting signs of dementia, Ruth laments the fact that the subsequent memory loss means that stories from her family’s history will be lost forever. These memories, the reader discovers, are a vital component to Ruth’s understanding of her family’s background. The second section takes the form of a memoir written some years before by Ruth’s mother, LuLing. Penned so that her daughter will have a deeper understanding of her mother’s life in China, Tan chooses to switch the narrative’s point of view, telling the story in first person. The third and final section reverts back to Ruth. Here, the author focuses on what Ruth chooses to do with the information she has discovered.

Ruth is no stranger to the written word herself. Although she despises the term, her occupation in San Francisco as a ghostwriter is used primarily in a metaphorical context. In the first pages of the novel, Ruth struggles to express her true feelings to the man she lives with, a father of two teenaged daughters. Another, more profound example of the metaphorical applications of Ruth’s profession present themselves in her mother’s life in China prior to moving to San Francisco. The relationship between Ruth and LuLing forms much of the foundation of the novel. In her old age, LuLing has become a burden to her daughter, the onset of symptoms of dementia merely exacerbating the strained relationship. Yet Ruth is able to connect with her mother, on a more intimate level, through her journals that portray much of the Chinese history, a history that is very much a part of her family’s legacy. The events are told against the backdrop of the inception of the Republic and the Communist government that followed. But some of the pages of her mother’s memoir tell of LuLing’s caregiver, Precious Auntie, who is the bonesetter’s daughter of the title. In her journals, LuLing tells of how her caregiver taught her the medicinal benefits and art of healing derived from the bones dug from nearby caves that were notoriously difficult to enter. Previous Auntie instills in her the importance of writing as a form of remembrance. “Otherwise, why did the gods say it, why did a person write it down?” she exclaims.

The turning point of the narrative, however, occurs in the second section when Ruth stumbles upon her mother’s journal in a chair she always used. Stuffed in the seat of her mother’s La-Z-Boy, she finds the translation of “things I should not forget.” This shift in Ruth discovers the horrible reality her mother faced while struggling to scratch out a living in rural China. On a more global scale, she learns of the horrors of the Japanese occupation and burgeoning civil war. Despite these harrowing discoveries, Ruth’s reactions to her mother’s struggles are a bit less visceral than might be expected. Yet, discovering that intimate piece of personal history irrevocably changes the course of Ruth’s life.



Tan’s emphasis on words and the history they can convey is prevalent throughout the novel. But there is an undercurrent of tension between mother and daughter, ancestor and descendant that is birthed from the keeping of histories that were not told soon enough. Just as Precious Auntie gives LuLing her first exposure to words through “Hand-talk, face-talk and chalk-talk,” Ruth must, in many ways, discover this legacy of words on her own. Tan uses LuLing’s declining mental state as the springboard that propels Ruth’s curiosity. Her own childhood – and by default, her introduction to words – centered around a desire to please her mother. Her earliest attempt at writing took the form of words scratched with a chopstick on a tray of sand.

As an adult, Ruth is less than thrilled with the role writing has taken in her own life. A woman whose upbringing was inundated with many forms of writing, her search to find her own writing voice has left her unsatisfied. Yet, by the end of the novel, Ruth has developed a new appreciation for her mother’s history – and indirectly – her own.

Tan draws extensively from her own maternal history as inspiration for the novel. “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” is her attempt to convey the importance of appreciating one’s heritage and saving as much of a family’s past as possible. Of her own mother’s experiences, Tan explains, “She wanted someone to go back and relive her life with her. It was a way for her to exorcise her demons, and for me to finally listen and empathize and learn what memory means, and what you can change about the past.” While Ruth’s past is littered with personal struggle and national turmoil, Tan offers the reader a compelling story of a woman’s journey and how words can often make the difference between rejecting one’s roots and accepting them.