English professors often ask their students to break down literary works to find the author’s meaning, but acclaimed writer Amy Tan says that takes the fun out of reading.

Amy TanShe explained a very different meaning behind her work to a packed theatre audience last week at the final Distinguished Speaker Series event of the year at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

Tan is considered one of the most highly acclaimed writers of our time. After her debut novel, “The Joy Luck Club,” which explores the relationships of Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters, Tan wrote “The Kitchen God’s Wife,” “The Hundred Secret Senses,” “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings” and “The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life.” Armed with “Cliff’s Notes” to the best-selling “The Joy Luck Club,” Tan told the Civic Arts Plaza audience that many book critics and professors have come up with elaborate meanings behind her story. After reading “Cliff’s Notes” recently, Tan said, she found all the answers to questions her fans have asked her for years about the book.

“For example: There was something about the art of invisible strength, a phrase that I used about a young chess player in the book. . . . The person who wrote ‘Cliff’s Notes’—Mr. Cliff himself—said that the art of invisible strength refers to self control, and it also said this art of invisible strength represents female power and . . . the power of foreigners.

“The real truth . . . is that I got this phrase from my mother. She used to say something to me when I was growing up.” Tan spoke a phrase in Chinese. “Actually, what it really means is, ‘No one wants to hear you make a big stink out of nothing, so shut up. . . . The literal translation of the phrase from Chinese to English is, ‘Loud farts don’t smell. The really smelly ones are deadly silent.’ “That is what I meant by the art of invisible strength,” Tan said.

Tan described the events of her life and how they have influenced her writing. Tan talked about the rape and resulting suicide of her grandmother, the sudden death of her father and brother, who died of brain tumors, and the many years she disobeyed her mother When she was in school, Tan tested horribly in writing. However, she excelled in math. At age 6, her parents told her she’d be a brain surgeon during the week and a concert pianist on the weekend.

As a child who moved around often, Tan would often write letters to friends about fantastic neighborhoods she lived in with mailmen who flew through the air.

“It wasn’t that I was delusional,” Tan said. “I just figured that my life wasn’t interesting and so I had to create the alternative things to report about.” Tan went to high school in Montreux, Switzerland. She attended Linfield College in Oregon, where she met her husband, Lou DeMattei, and later received her master’s degree in linguistics from San Jose University.

Soon after graduating college, Tan got a job as a language development consultant to programs designed for disabled children. That led her to writing grant proposals, which in turn led her to writing business proposals.

“I was writing about 90 hours a week,” Tan said. “I wasn’t really enjoying it. . . . I had friends who said, ‘We never see you. You’re a workaholic. You need to see somebody about this.’ Eventually I did.

I saw a psychiatrist.” When that didn’t help ease her mind, she decided to read and write fiction. In 1985, Tan attended a writing workshop and wrote “Rules of the Game,” which evolved into “The Joy Luck Club.” In 1986, Tan found her voice and her reason for writing. During a trip to Hawaii, she heard that her mother had suffered a heart attack.

Tan thought her mother was dead.

On her way to a telephone she remembered something her mother told her six months prior.

“She had asked me, ‘If I die, what you remember?’” Tan said.

“My mom said in a very sad and also angry voice, ‘I think you know little percent of me.’ I heard those words again as I was going to the telephone.” Tan made a vow that if her mother recovered, Tan would get to know her much better. “I will listen to her, I will listen to her stories without saying, ‘Mom, I’ve heard that one a hundred times.’ I will take her to China. I will meet her family.” Tan soon after found that her mom hadn’t had a heart attack, but angina. Still, Tan made good on her promise to listen to her mother, take her to China, meet her family and take an interest in her mother’s life.

The stories that make up “The Joy Luck Club” came from lessons learned during that time.

“My mother actually read that book,” Tan said. “She got to the end and her first words to me were, ‘So easy to read. . . .’ The next time that she tried to complain about something—instead of going on for two hours or three hours excessively as she used to do, she stopped herself and said, ‘I don’t need to tell you.

You understand. You’re just like me.’” In addition to her best-selling books, Tan also wrote two children’s books, “The Moon Lady” and “Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat,” and she co-wrote the screenplays “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Snow Falling on Cedars” with Ron Bass.

Tan’s newest book, “Saving Fish from Drowning,” will be released in October.