Finding Your Roots

GATES: I'm Henry Lewis Gates Jr.

Welcome to "Finding Your Roots."

In this episode, we'll meet novelist Amy Tan and poet Rita Dove.

Two writers who are about to discover the drama hidden within their family trees.

What would your mom say?

Would this have moved her?

DOVE: Yes, it would've.

I think she would've started to cry as I'm trying not to now.

TAN: This just shows you how deeply connected we are to the past.

It also makes me wanna write more stories about my family.

GATES: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available.

Genealogists comb through paper trails, stretching back hundreds of years.

DOVE: Uh oh, how did you find this?

This is fantastic.

GATES: While DNA experts utilize the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations.

TAN: I'm just stunned that they never talked about this.

GATES: And we've compiled it all into a Book of Life, a record of all of our discoveries.

TAN: Oh, my mother would've been so happy to see that.

DOVE: I have their names, I have places where they lived, and it just feels enormously full.

GATES: My two guests have written masterpieces based on family stories.

Now, the size of their families is going to expand exponentially.

In this episode, Amy and Rita will meet ancestors whose names they've never heard before and hear stories whose plots they could never imagine.

(theme music playing).

(book closes).

Amy Tan is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

Her six bestselling novels have been translated into more than 17 languages, and they've sold millions of copies.

One has been adapted into a Hollywood film while another has been turned into an opera.

But all this success flows out of a terrible personal tragedy.

When Amy was 15, her older brother died from a brain tumor.

Less than a year later, her father succumbed to the same condition, and perhaps understandably, Amy's mother lost control.

TAN: My mother went crazy and she became suicidal, she thought that she had magical thinking.

She believed even after they were dead, she could bring them back.

GATES: Hmm.

TAN: She thought we were cursed, and she went looking for the reasons.

Uh, so my life changed in a way.

It was very unstable.

We moved to Switzerland, which sounds great, and it was in a way, but it was with this instability as to what we were gonna do with our lives.

As it turns out, this instability would last decades.

Amy attended five different colleges before finally earning her degree.

Then after trying her hand in education, she became a business writer, crafting speeches for executives.

She was almost 35 years old when she realized that she'd been put on this earth for something more.

TAN: I thought, what is the meaning of my life?

And there was no meaning except to make the money.

My clients were great.

They really respected me, but I needed to do something other than this.

I was working 90 hours, and I decided I'll work 50 billable hours, and I used that extra 40 to do something more meaningful.

And, and that's when I started writing fiction.

GATES: Hmm.

TAN: And I gave myself a goal that I would be published in a good literary magazine, a little one, not "The New Yorker..." GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: Um, by the time I was 70.

So I've made it, I made it.

(laughs).

GATES: Amy has more than made it.

After deciding to become a writer, she began working on a set of stories that would become the "Joy Luck Club," a fictionalized account of her mother's life.

The novel was an instant sensation, and it put Amy on the path she's still following today.

But only her mother knew just how creative Amy actually was.

TAN: My mother read it, and she was a little mad that people thought it was just, you know, that it wasn't imaginative.

GATES: Uh-huh.

TAN: She knew that most of what was in the stories were emotionally true but the stories themselves, the narrative, many things were, were just made up.

GATES: But that's why it's called a fiction.

TAN: That's right, but my mother knew that, and she was so proud of it.

You know, a lot of people say, how did your family feel?

Was she angry?

And I said, are you kidding?

She loved this book so much.

She said, next book, write my true story.

You know?

GATES: My second guest is Rita Dove, the first African American poet laureate of the United States.

Rita's talents have brought her success that most poets can scarcely imagine.

She's been honored by two presidents and received more awards than I can count.

But her accomplishments have not left her jaded.

Rita still radiates love for her craft.

A passion that she says dates back to some of the very first lines she ever wrote.

DOVE: It was Easter.

And they said, you can do something creative for Easter.

You can paint something, do it, you know, whatever you want.

And I wrote this poem about an Easter bunny who had one droopy ear had, you know, he was, of course, he had a feeling.

And I didn't know how it was going to end, but I kept writing.

And then because it rhymed, because of all, in a certain way, I, I found the ending and that joy, that the way the whole page opened up, I thought, oh, I love this.

GATES: Although she may have discovered her calling at a young age, it would take years for Rita actually to embrace poetry as her profession.

This was partly due to the way she was raised.

Rita grew up in a household where work was taken very seriously.

Her father was an industrial chemist, and Rita initially set out to become a lawyer.

It wasn't until her junior year in college that she realized she needed to change course.

DOVE: Suddenly I thought, no, I want to write, and I'm going to write until I can't afford any food anymore.

Then I'll figure something out.

But first, let's try this.

So I went home at Thanksgiving, I think it was, and told my mother first, of course, in the kitchen, I'll never forget it.

And she stopped making dinner and said, "You better tell your father yourself."

And I went into the living room where my father was reading the paper, and I said, "Dad, I, I decided I wanna be a poet."

I didn't even say writer, I said, poet.

GATES: Uh-Huh.

DOVE: And he hesitated, put down the paper, hesitated again.

And then he said, "Well, I don't understand poetry, don't be upset if I don't read it."

GATES: Huh.

DOVE: Which I thought was, in a certain way, the greatest blessing he could have given me, just to say, you know, this is not my wheel in my wheelhouse, go for whatever you need to go for.

I also know I could write whatever I wanted, I didn't have to show him.

(laughs).

GATES: Now free to pursue her dreams, Rita would ultimately find fame by writing about her roots.

In 1986, she published "Thomas and Beulah," a collection of poems inspired by the lives of her mother's parents.

The book won a Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of American literature, but it emerged organically, almost unplanned.

After many conversations between Rita and her mother.

DOVE: We would just talk and then sometimes she would mention a memory, or sometimes I had specific ideas like, what was a favorite color?

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: Then I, you know, she was the first one to get that book after, you know, my husband and me, and, uh, she said, "Yeah, those are the stories.

That's all right."

GATES: What would your grandparents have said?

What would they have thought of this book?

DOVE: Oh, wow.

GATES: You waited till they were gone.

DOVE: Oh, that's a great question, I've never thought about it before.

I'm sure my grandmother would've understood the embellishments.

GATES: Uh-Huh.

DOVE: She made hats for church ladies, so I, I, I saw her, you know, making these things up as she went along and making it grow.

So I think in the end, she would've been pleased but she also would've said, you know, well, you know, this is, you know, I see what you did here.

GATES: Yeah.

DOVE: Whereas my grandfather would've just been happy.

He would've said, "That's real, that's, that's, that's sweet, that's good sweetheart."

GATES: Both Rita and Amy have turned their family stories into art.

Now we're going to see what they may have missed along the way.

Uncovering details and dramas that somehow have alluded them.

I started with Amy Tan and with her mother, Du Qin, or Daisy, as she would later be called, born in Shanghai in 1916, Du Qin's life story sounds like fiction.

She was orphaned as a child and grew up in the home of an adoptive family.

Then when she was just 19, she was forced to marry an Air Force officer named Wong Chuo.

And she immediately regretted it.

TAN: She married him, and from the first night, he brought home other women to be in the marriage bed.

GATES: Hmm.

TAN: He did that for all of their marriage.

He gambled away her money.

He, uh, held the gun to her head when he wanted to have sex with her, and she wouldn't do it.

Um, he was a pilot, and so he was like a movie star.

GATES: Hmm.

TAN: He could do everything and people respected him for that, so she had no say.

GATES: Sounds like being trapped in a nightmare.

TAN: Yeah.

GATES: Du Qin's salvation would come from an unlikely source.

In 1940, when she was 24 years old, she met Amy's father, a young engineer.

The two would begin an affair, but first, they had to evade Du Qin's powerful husband, which took a great deal of ingenuity.

Indeed, newspaper articles from the time detail how after filing for divorce, Du Qin moved to Tianjin a city in northern China, where she lived with Amy's father, under an assumed name.

TAN: This is in the newspaper.

GATES: It's in the newspaper, "Shen Bao" newspaper.

TAN: The gossip column.

GATES: Your mother ran away from her husband and moved in with your father.

And to help keep it a secret, she even changed her name, did you know that?

TAN: No.

GATES: And look at the photo, that is a photo of your parents Tianjin in the 1940s, they look so much in love.

TAN: They do.

GATES: What do you think it felt like when they were finally able to be together?

TAN: This was fate, fulfilled.

She is finally loved, she hasn't been loved since her mother died.

She now belongs to somebody.

GATES: Unfortunately, Du Qin's happiness would soon face grave obstacles.

In 1947, her husband tracked her down and had her charged with adultery, a crime punishable by imprisonment.

That same year, recognizing that their future in China was hopeless, Amy's father immigrated to the United States.

The couple was now an ocean apart, but we made a discovery that shows how deep their ties remained.

Amy, I'm not sure you've seen these before.

TAN: No, I haven't.

GATES: Our researchers found these letters in the court archives in Shanghai.

They are love letters.

TAN: Oh my, oh.

GATES: Your father wrote them to your mother in November and December 1947.

TAN: Oh, oh, wow.

GATES: Would you please read what your father wrote to your mother?

TAN: "After leaving you for too long I feel unbalanced.

I am lonely and living without meaning.

I feel hopeless both within my physical being and inside my heart.

I need you dearly.

Oh dear.

My honey.

Come here soon.

Regarding your coming to America.

The only way is to enter school to study.

There is no other way to proceed.

It is estimated by February of the following year that you'll be returned into my arms."

Ugh.

Oh, "honey, my honey."

That is so romantic.

GATES: Amy's parents were not only romantic, they were also somewhat naive.

Despite the passionate letters, Du Qin would soon be on trial in Shanghai and newspaper.

reports of her testimony describe a life with her husband that's difficult even to contemplate.

TAN: "He prohibited me from eating during the day and sleeping at night.

I wasn't allowed to laugh or cry.

I was forced to attempt suicide with a gun or a knife.

I was treated like a prostitute.

It's so shameful that I would rather not talk about it."

When testifying to this point, tears streamed down her face and she was sobbing silently.

Judge Jung tried to persuade the defendant to reconcile and return home with her husband.

Du insisted that she would rather die than go back to his house and Du remained in custody pending for future hearings.

Whoa, she couldn't laugh or cry.

She couldn't eat during the day.

Just makes me very sad.

I didn't know about all the forces against her.

GATES: She'd must have been terrified.

TAN: Yeah.

GATES: Under Chinese law, a woman could only obtain a divorce for domestic violence if she could prove that she'd been abused.

And even if she could do that, special protections existed for military officers.

So Du Qin stood a very real chance of going to prison.

But that didn't stop her.

And in March of 1949, after years of fighting, the judges finally ruled in her favor.

TAN: Due to the sincerity expressed by B, no further charges will be pursued against B from now on.

Judgment was made in front of the prosecutor on duty dated March 31st, 1949.

Shanghai High Court.

GATES: Victory.

TAN: Yes.

GATES: The adultery case against your mother was dismissed and her divorce was upheld.

Double victory.

TAN: Yep.

GATES: What's it like to read this?

This is her freedom papers.

TAN: Wow.

And I think it was something she did persistence-wise that made this happen.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: Uh, she, she never gave up.

And this is the day she was released.

GATES: That's right.

Turn the page, I wanna show you something.

This is a list of passengers traveling on a Philippine Airlines flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco on August 27th, 1949.

TAN: Daisy Chan Tu, 32, single, student, permanent address Lincoln University, San Francisco, California.

Ooh.

GATES: About five months after the adultery case was dismissed, your mother arrived to the waiting, loving arms of your father in San Francisco.

And she came on a student visa just like your father had suggested.

What's it like to see that?

TAN: Yeah, Lincoln University.

Now, she never stepped foot in there.

I tell you.

(laughs).

GATES: While Du Qin had no intention of attending school, she did have some very specific plans.

Just 15 days after arriving in America, she married Amy's father.

Then she settled down in San Francisco and started a family.

A family she'd nurtured despite the terrible ordeal that lay behind her.

TAN: I mean, she was so strong.

She didn't give up, and she survived.

She was always a survivor.

And this is the result of that, the happy ending, for a while.

GATES: The happy ending.

TAN: Yeah.

GATES: Could you please turn the page?

Would you please read the transcribed section?

TAN: Mm-mm.

(crying).

Tan, Daisy whose life inspired...

Sorry.

Tan, Daisy, whose life inspired her daughter, Amy Tan's novels, "The Joy Luck Club," "The Kitchen God's Wife," passed away peacefully at home, San Francisco, with her loving family by her side on November 22nd, 1999.

Daisy was an amazing cook and a prolific teller of family tales, she worked as a nurse with Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, which provided the hospice care and support during her final days.

GATES: What's it like to see that?

TAN: I think she felt she was important, that she made a difference.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: You know, and I shouldn't be sad about this.

It's more with the notion after going through that history, that very difficult history, and to see that it had culminated in, you know, these accolades for her.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: And that her life was not for naught and that she, it was good that she stayed alive.

And she could see that amazing woman.

GATES: Like Amy, Rita Dove was about to discover hidden facets of the family that had been so central to her work.

Rita's maternal grandmother, Georgianna Jackson, was the inspiration for many of her poems.

But Rita knew almost nothing about Georgianna's roots.

We set out to change that and found Georgianna's father Damon Jackson in an 1891 city directory for Washington, D.C.

It shows them living in a neighborhood called Swamp Poodle, just six blocks from the United States Capitol.

Have you ever heard of this place, Swamp Poodle?

DOVE: No, no, has anyone ever heard of it?

This is kind of amazing.

GATES: Well, it was a very rough place.

It was known for rival gangs, speakeasies, and brawls.

In fact, in the decades before this city directory was recorded, it had a reputation as one of the toughest neighborhoods in all of Washington, D.C., your grandmother Georgianna was born right there.

DOVE: Oh, man.

GATES: Now, is this how you pictured her childhood?

DOVE: No, no, she was my grandmother.

GATES: Swamp Poodle was demolished in the early 1900s and few images have survived from the time when Rita's ancestor lived here.

But as we poured over newspapers from the era, we got a surprising window into their lives.

"Damon Jackson and Joseph Plummer quarreled over 5 cents in a game of craps."

Oh geez.

"Jackson seized the hatchet and dealt Plummer three severe blows over the face and head with the blade as, as Plummer fell on the cobblestones unconscious, Jackson made his escape.

Plummer was removed to the emergency hospital where it was found that his skull was broken.

His recovery is doubtful."

Oh no, a hatchet?

GATES: I didn't encounter this story in "Thomas and Beulah."

DOVE: No, no, no.

This is one of those stories no one ever talked about, obviously.

Oh my goodness.

GATES: Rita's great-grandfather was charged with assault, but he pled not guilty and found himself on trial where he argued that his victim had threatened his wife after losing all his money gambling.

According to the defense, your great-grandfather was simply trying to protect his home and his family, especially his wife.

So what do you think really happened?

(laughter).

DOVE: Woo, I don't know.

Um, I don't know, I don't know what really happened.

GATES: Guilty or innocent?

DOVE: I think he's guilty.

GATES: Think he's guilty?

Would you please turn the page?

DOVE: Mm-Hmm.

GATES: Rita, this was published in "The Evening Star" on May 6th.

DOVE: Ooh, yay!

(laughter).

GATES: Would you please read the transcribed section?

DOVE: "Damon Jackson was tried in the criminal court yesterday for an assault with intent to kill and found not guilty."

Yes.

GATES: Your great-grandfather was indeed acquitted.

How does it feel to see that?

DOVE: Oh, I'm thrilled, I think this is kind of wonderful.

I mean, if he had not been found not guilty, who knows whether I would've ended up being here at all for that matter.

GATES: That's true, that's true.

The records of Damon's trial no longer survive.

So we don't know what inspired the jury to reach its verdict.

It's also unclear whether Damon's brush with the law had a significant impact on his life.

Just a few years later now going by the name of Gates Jackson, we found him in trouble once again.

DOVE: "Speakeasies Raided," oh gosh.

(laughter).

"Policeman, O'Dea, and Brawner yesterday raided three speakeasies in what is known as Swamp Poodle and captured Gates Jackson of number 65 Jackson Alley.

Jackson was fined $250 with three months in the workhouse as the equivalent."

GATES: He was charged with running a speakeasy.

Well, there he graduated into, you know... GATES: Business.

DOVE: Yes.

GATES: He's an entrepreneur.

Remember, he was running the craps game.

DOVE: He was running the crap game, but now he's moved out and kind of done a speakeasy kind of thing.

GATES: Yeah.

DOVE: Well, you know, you gotta get ahead.

GATES: Do you identify with this ancestor of yours?

He was a character.

DOVE: Well, I, what I identify with is the fact that he was staying alive.

That he was trying to make it through in, you know, questionable ways.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: Very definitely.

But there's an energy, it sounds like.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: To the, to this person.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: You know, you know, both with the, um, incident before, but also with, with having a speakeasy in this crazy district, and also going by a name Gates.

I mean, Gates, Gates Jackson has a certain great ring to it, you know?

GATES: I think it sounds noble.

(laughter).

DOVE: And so, yeah, in a certain way.

I'm like, "Go on, okay, let's see what you're gonna do."

I'm but, the, the jury's out on whether he was good or bad.

GATES: Unfortunately, we had little more to share with Rita about her great-grandfather.

He passed away in September of 1909, and his death certificate, which lists his occupation as laborer, suggests that he died suddenly.

DOVE: Cause of death: Tuberculoses meningitis.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: Exhaustion.

Duration: eight days.

GATES: Mm.

DOVE: Oh.

GATES: He was only about 40 years old.

DOVE: No, yeah.

GATES: He had a bacterial infection in his spine and brain, and he was suffering from exhaustion.

DOVE: Worked to death.

GATES: Mm.

What's it like to see that?

DOVE: It's very sad.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: I feel very sad, and I don't even know this man, but he basically came to life in, in two pages or three, uh, you know, some newspaper articles, and now it's gone.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: And, uh, think of all the lives out there like that.

GATES: Turning from Damon to his wife Mary we found a far happier story to tell.

Mary's father was a man named Thomas Reeder.

He was born sometime around 1840, searching for details about his life we uncovered an inventory taken during the Civil War that lists him and three of his siblings as the human property of a slave owner in eastern Maryland.

The document also shows that in September of 1862, Thomas left his plantation either as a fugitive slave or in the company of the Union Army.

And since the Union Army was not operating in Eastern Maryland at the time, we believe that Thomas ran away all on his own.

DOVE: Geez, oh my goodness.

GATES: Did you ever think that you descended from one who'd actually run away from slavery?

DOVE: I had hoped that I had, let's put it that way, but to actually be presented with evidence no, I never would've imagined that.

GATES: Well, and we are guessing that he ran away to Washington because one, it was close, and D.C. had abolished slavery on April 16th, 1862.

DOVE: Ah.

GATES: And he is gone by September of 1862.

So, and we also know that this is where your Reeder family ended up.

DOVE: Right.

GATES: So it makes sense... DOVE: It makes sense.

GATES: To speculate.

DOVE: Wow.

GATES: What do you think that was like for him?

Imagine to come to a new place as a free man and he ran away from his family, you know?

DOVE: Yeah, he did.

GATES: The other Reeder's are back there, his sibs.

DOVE: Yeah, he leaves, uh, which is both incredibly daring and, and I don't know, a little cold too.

Um, it, it, it must have been so bad.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: That he could leave his family and do this.

Um, and to arrive in Washington, D.C. at that time in Swap Poodle or wherever he ended up, it still must have felt like heaven in comparison.

GATES: Oh, yeah.

DOVE: Yeah.

GATES: It's impossible to determine Thomas's movements with any precision, but we do know that he was living in Washington, D.C. by 1880 and raising children there.

We also know that his mother eventually joined him in the city, along with at least two of his siblings, allowing us to add yet another branch to Rita's family tree, as well as a host of new names.

So what's it like to meet this whole new line of ancestors?

DOVE: Well, you see me grinning, right?

GATES: Yeah.

DOVE: I was just grinning because it does feel as almost as if the party is just getting started now, you know, they're all here and there they were.

Part of me is a little, it's sad because it's a part of me that I, I didn't wanna think about the all these lost.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: People, and though we can't build, you know, their entire story, I have a little bit now.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: I have their names, I have places where they, they, you know, lived.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: And survived and ran away from, um, and yeah, it just feels enormously full.

GATES: We'd already seen how Amy Tan's mother managed to escape an abusive marriage in China and build a new life for herself in the United States.

Now we turned to the man who helped make that life possible, Amy's father, John Tan.

John immigrated to America roughly two years before his wife and ended up becoming a minister.

But he'd had an entirely different career back in China.

Records show he attended a university in Beijing where he was a talented engineering student, and that he even invented a radio transmitter that was sold commercially.

TAN: Whoa.

GATES: Have you ever seen that before?

TAN: No, mm-mm, no.

I wish I had known more about his accomplishments, you know, early on, because there was a separation between the past and the life that we knew with him we didn't have access to that.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: Because he immigrated, you know, you start your life over once you've immigrated, you leave all that behind the honors, the university that you went to, and, and any of these inventions that's gone, you're starting over again.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: And, and that's what we knew.

GATES: Blackboard has been erased.

TAN: Yep.

GATES: Happily, our researchers were able to fill in much of that empty blackboard mapping John's life in China, from Beijing to a university in the city of Guilin, and finally to Shanghai, where, as Amy's mother battled for her divorce, John made the momentous decision to board a ship.

TAN: Johan Tan, 30, engineer, nationality, China.

Final destination, San Francisco, California, to join friend Frank View.

GATES: That is a record of the moment your father arrived in the United States of America.

What's it like to see that?

TAN: I just, I'm there, I'm imagining him, you know, on this boat getting off, new world, new opportunities, leaving a lot of chaos and trouble behind, leaving a woman he loved behind.

GATES: Did he talk about the journey ever?

TAN: No, he didn't.

GATES: John obtained his visa to visit America by passing a U.S. government exam for a scholarship.

But he didn't choose to study engineering, instead, he enrolled in a divinity school, much to the dismay of his family back in China.

Amy believes that he made the decision because he was guilt-ridden about his adulterous affair with Du Qin.

TAN: He must have done this because of my mother.

His family cut him off, his favorite sister cut him off.

My mother wouldn't speak to them, and he chose her.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: Yeah, so he had to change his whole life and the direction of his life.

GATES: Do you know much about your ancestors on your father's side of your family tree?

TAN: I know that his, he was born to a family of 12 or 12 living, uh, births.

And that his father was very religious and that there was this, I don't know, sort of a humorous anecdote that they had so many kids, they had their own church.

(laughs).

So yeah, I received one letter from my grandfather, it was in English.

It was very formal.

Um, and that's, that's about it.

GATES: John's parents were both born in Southern China in the early 1890s.

Unfortunately, we were able to learn almost nothing more about his father, Amy's grandfather, but with Amy's grandmother, a woman named Yang Shu Ying, we got lucky.

We uncovered what's known as a jiapu, a book of genealogy that was kept by her ancestors for centuries.

It allowed us to identify Amy's ancestral hometown, the village of Yakou in Quang-Tung province.

Your family lived there for 10 generations spanning about 400 years.

TAN: Wow.

GATES: What's it like to see that?

TAN: Home.

(laughs).

I'm home.

GATES: Do you feel a connection?

TAN: I do.

I mean, look at this landscape, and this is the waters, the lake, or the whatever this is that they took a boat out on, they saw the same landscape.

You know, it just connects to, I mean, I just imagine also they love this, they love this scenery and that, I love it.

GATES: There is one detail in this scenery that would prove especially meaningful to Amy.

An ancestral hall built in Yakou village.

Two pillars here are engraved with a poem written by the elders of Amy's clan.

Incredibly, the poem instructs future clan members to honor their ancestors by pursuing the arts.

TAN: The descendants will enlighten the family name and carry on the family heritage through the study of poetry, classics, rituals, and music.

There we go.

GATES: Amy Tan.

TAN: I'm carrying on the legacy.

GATES: I don't think you had a choice.

TAN: No, no, it's embedded in this.

Wow.

GATES: And they left this sort of message to the future in the form of a poem itself.

TAN: Yes.

GATES: What do you think it means to them, to your ancestors?

TAN: I think they just said "Very good, very good An-mei, you did good."

According to Amy's family's jiapu, her young clan in Yakou Village was founded by a man named Yang Yingxiang.

He's Amy's 18th great-grandfather, and he was born in the 13th century, but he's not the founder of the entire Yang clan.

That honor belongs to a man born over 100 years earlier.

TAN: Yang Yuangui.

GATES: You've just read the name of the Yang clan founder.

And according to this jiapu, your family tree, Yuangui is your 22nd great-grandfather.

TAN: Whoa.

Oh, and what year was that?

GATES: He moved to Xiang Shen from Yang Shao City in the 1100s in the 12th century.

TAN: Wow.

GATES: You are able to trace your family lineage back more than 850 years through a paper trail.

TAN: Wow.

It just shows you how deeply connected we are to the past.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: It also makes me wanna write more stories about my family.

(laughs).

GATES: Well, we've done a little research for you.

TAN: Yeah.

GATES: What would your dad have made of this?

TAN: He would've been very proud and glad that we finally understand that side of the family.

Um, he was so focused on making us American so we would fit in.

And so we, I think he would just say, yes, now you're ready to know this part of the family.

You could be Chinese.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

TAN: As well you can go into this with, um, with pride and with curiosity now, and the knowledge that these are people who passed on all the things that are important.

GATES: Like Amy, Rita Dove was about to discover just how much had been hidden within her father's family tree.

The story begins with Rita's grandmother, a woman named Lucy Nettles.

Lucy was warm and nurturing and a beloved figure in Rita's childhood.

Yet, as we researched her life, we quickly realized that Lucy had suffered a great deal in silence.

In the 1900 census for Georgia, we found Lucy as a three-year-old girl living with her father, Homer Nettles.

But Lucy's mother Virginia was nowhere to be seen.

And the census hints at a terrible tragedy.

DOVE: Homer.

Son, black, age 26, widowed.

GATES: Widowed, your great-grandmother Virginia, died sometime between 1896 when your grandmother Lucy was born.

DOVE: Right.

GATES: And 1900 when that census was set.

DOVE: Right, yes.

GATES: So Lucy lost her mom.

DOVE: She lost her mom at that age.

GATES: Did your grandmother ever talk about growing up without her mother?

DOVE: No, she did not, she did not.

GATES: Isn't that interesting?

DOVE: It's amazing, yeah, she did not.

GATES: There are no records to tell us how, or even exactly when Virginia died, but her loss clearly devastated her family.

By 1900 Homer was raising Lucy in his parents' home in Rockmart, Georgia, and he didn't stay there for long.

DOVE: 1903, City Directory, Kansas City, Kansas, what?

Nettles, Homer.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

Colored, fireman.

He went to Kansas.

GATES: Homer moves to Kansas City.

DOVE: Yeah.

GATES: Have you ever heard anything about this?

DOVE: Oh, no, no, no and no one's ever mentioned Kansas as a possibility and, and the geography of our family and became a fireman to boot.

GATES: Yeah, and guess what?

Homer remarried the same year to a woman named Anna Calvert.

DOVE: He put his life back together in Kansas City, wow.

My goodness.

GATES: Homer may have found happiness in his new life, but records suggest that he didn't try to share that happiness with his daughter.

The 1910 census for Kansas City shows Homer and his new wife Anna, living on their own.

DOVE: Ah, okay, so.

GATES: And you notice who's missing?

DOVE: Mm, Lucy.

GATES: Lucy, your grandmother.

DOVE: Mm-Hmm.

GATES: Who would be 13 by now?

DOVE: Yes.

GATES: Where do you think Lucy is?

DOVE: He's left Lucy behind.

GATES: Could you please turn the page?

This is a page from the 1910 Federal census, the same year.

DOVE: Mm-Hmm.

GATES: For Rockmart.

DOVE: Mm-Hmm.

GATES: Which is in Georgia, as you know.

Would you please read that transcribed section?

DOVE: Russell, Josiah D., head of household, Black, age 30.

Occupation: laborer, cement plant.

Hannah mother, Black, age: 64.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: Occupation, laundress, industry: private family.

Lucy Nettles niece, mulatto, age 13.

There she is.

GATES: There's your grandmother living with her maternal uncle whose name was Josiah Russell.

DOVE: Mm-Hmm.

GATES: And her grandmother.

DOVE: Her grandmother.

GATES: Your great-great-grandmother, whose name was Hannah Carter in Rockmart.

DOVE: Hmm.

GATES: So it looks like Homer left his daughter to be raised by her mother's family.

DOVE: Yeah, left her there.

GATES: How do you think this affected the person she became?

DOVE: Uh, she never let a child of hers go.

She always took them in.

And she had quite a few children.

And, and I always was struck by, even as a young, as a younger person, uh, just how family meant a lot to her.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: That's the person she became because she didn't have that.

GATES: Lucy's father Homer died on May 1st, 1919 in Kansas City.

And we don't know if he ever saw his daughter again after he left Georgia.

But by the time he passed away, Lucy was building a family of her own.

She married Rita's grandfather, Joseph Dove in 1911 when he was 23, and she was only 14.

A troubling fact that has long haunted Rita.

DOVE: She told me that, you know, she didn't wanna get married.

GATES: Right.

DOVE: But she was married off.

GATES: Uh-huh.

DOVE: And, um, so I thought about that a lot.

GATES: Yeah.

DOVE: I thought about the age of 14.

GATES: Yeah.

DOVE: And, and already abandoned by your father, your mother is dead.

And then what else are you gonna do?

I guess they want to get rid of her.

GATES: But how do you think she avoided becoming a dark and bitter person with those facts of maternity and paternity?

DOVE: Well, this is, it's so interesting because she was, she was a very religious woman, and I think that that really helped her through.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: You know, she, she grew up, um, then very religious in the Baptist church.

And my, um, her husband and my, my grandfather was not very religious, you know.

GATES: Uh-huh.

DOVE: And in fact, he was though, he worked and he... GATES: Yeah.

DOVE: You know, supplied money for the family.

He also drank and, uh, would go off on binges and leave and desert them for a little while.

She held that family and all those, and all those children together through that faith.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

DOVE: You know, I think that's what helped her through.

And then in the end too, I mean, the children, some of the children, not all of them, but some of the children, you know, really also helped her through, you know?

GATES: Right.

DOVE: It's family above everything.

GATES: Lucy would go on to have 11 children and help move her family from rural Georgia to Akron, Ohio, where Rita herself would be born.

When Lucy passed away in 1988, she had at least 20 grandchildren.

And as Rita surveyed all that we had discovered about her grandmother's life, she was struck by just how much Lucy and her family had endured.

DOVE: It, it really just deepens my compassion for these ancestors who in their own ways of survival, whether they, you know, headed out for the territories, like Homer, or whether they had to sit there and bear those children like Lucy, the ways in which they survived, and the ways in which they decided that, um, that story should or shouldn't be told.

And what I find interesting is that all of this kind of underscores or explains what I've always felt was a kind of curious way in which, um, my family doesn't talk about things.

GATES: Uh-huh.

DOVE: Like this, you know?

GATES: Hmm.

DOVE: Um, but it's almost as if, well, this is the way they were raised, right?

So I I'm beginning to understand that a little bit more.

GATES: Hmm.

(sighs).

DOVE: And now I gotta go to Kansas.

(laughter).

GATES: The paper trail had run out for Rita and Amy.

DOVE: Oh.

GATES: It was time to show them their full family trees.

TAN: Here we are.

Oh my.

GATES: Now filled with names they never heard before.

For each, it was a moment of awe.

DOVE: Oh this is amazing, this is so amazing.

I feel like I am sitting under a tree of, with immense foliage, it's not going to give out anytime soon.

TAN: All the ghosts in my family are here and they're applauding.

GATES: My time with my guest was coming to a close, but I had a final question for each of them.

What do you think all these ancestors would have made of you?

DOVE: Well, hmm, I don't know.

I mean, I, I think that my, my, um, hatchet-wielding ancestor might've said, you done done something, you know or something like that.

And, and I, I, I would hope that for all these women in here, and I'm so grateful to have followed along in, in their line a little bit, would have, uh, just been so happy to see that, that, um, they weren't forgotten.

And, you know, that, that something came of all that.

TAN: You have unleashed the best storytelling ever.

Tracing, you know, a story has a narrative and you don't know everything that's gonna happen at each turn.

And what you've done was revealed the turns for me and, and revealed the human nature, the people behind that that led to my story, and I'm so appreciative.

GATES: That's the end of our journey with Amy Tan and Rita Dove.

Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of "Finding Your Roots."