A similar metamorphosis or transformation has occurred in Tan’s parable, although, of course, we know that the market vendor’s story is just a clever bit of sales patter, a piece of nonsense, to give the swan a ‘back story’ which will make the woman in the parable pay an extortionate sum for it. The symbolism of the swan in ‘Feathers from a Thousand Li Away’ recalls Hans Christian Andersen’s famous nineteenth-century fairy tale, ‘ The Ugly Duckling’, in which a young duck (which is different from the other ducks, and in fact turns out to be a cygnet) grows up to become a beautiful swan. She lives in Utah with her family, and her debut novel is Shielded. It is fitting that ‘Feathers from a Thousand Li Away’ prefaces the stories that follow in The Joy Luck Club, since it introduces a number of key themes that will return again and again in the novel: mothers and their relationships with their daughters, Chinese women emigrating to the United States in search of a better life for themselves and for their future children, and the possibility, or hope, of transformation. When shes not writing, she spends her time playing volleyball, reading, and traveling.
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