此書為自傳性質，作者的靈感來源是她的母親，書中可看出她對保守傳統母親的回憶是又愛又恨，幽默的寫法常常讓讀者有共鳴會心的一笑。她生長在加州北部一個中西衝突的家庭，父親是牧師深信上帝會保佑凡人，母親則只相信命運，她受母親影響很深，童年記憶中，祖母自殺，14歲時遭受父親和哥哥死亡的打擊，這些都影響成年後的Amy，她也和母親一樣相信命運，不過她卻舉出可以和命運對抗的方法，如機會、信仰、愛和寬恕.....
She talks of beauty and how she was perceived as a teenager in a country where Marilyn Monroe was the ultimate sex symbol. She describes the daily difficulties of being at once American and Chinese and yet feeling at times like she was truly neither.
Most significantly, and heartbreakingly, she tells the history of her family: the grandmother who committed suicide as the only means of defiance open to her against a husband who ignored her wishes; her remarkable mother, whose first husband had her jailed when she tried to leave him; and the shocking deaths of both her father and brother when Amy was just 14. How this weight of history has brought itself to bear on the adult Amy looms large in her own story. Ghosts, chance and fate have played a part in her life, and The Opposite of Fate is an insight into those ancestors, the women who 'never let me forget why these stories need to be told.'
She talks of beauty and how she was perceived as a teenager in a country where Marilyn Monroe was the ultimate sex symbol. She describes the daily difficulties of being at once American and Chinese and yet feeling at times like she was truly neither.
Most significantly, and heartbreakingly, she tells the history of her family: the grandmother who committed suicide as the only means of defiance open to her against a husband who ignored her wishes; her remarkable mother, whose first husband had her jailed when she tried to leave him; and the shocking deaths of both her father and brother when Amy was just 14. How this weight of history has brought itself to bear on the adult Amy looms large in her own story. Ghosts, chance and fate have played a part in her life, and The Opposite of Fate is an insight into those ancestors, the women who 'never let me forget why these stories need to be told.'