Amy Ruth Tan (born February 19, 1952) is an American author best known for her novel The Joy Luck Club (1989), which was adapted into a 1993 film. She is also known for other novels, short story collections, children's books, and a memoir.
Amy was born in Oakland, California.[1] She is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her father was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who traveled to the United States, in order to escape the chaos of the Chinese Civil War.[2][3] She recounts that her father and she would read the thesaurus together, since “he was very interested in what a word contains.”[4] This was the beginning of her path to becoming a writer, as she wanted to use words to create stories to make herself feel understood.[5] Amy attended Marian A. Peterson High School in Sunnyvale, for a year. When she was fifteen, her father and older brother, Peter, both died of brain tumors within six months of each other.[6]
Her mother Daisy subsequently moved Amy and her younger brother, John Jr, to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa, Montreux.[7] During this period, Amy learned about her mother's previous marriage to another man in China, of their four children (a son who died as a toddler and three daughters). She also learned how her mother left those children in Shanghai. This incident was a key part of the basis for Amy's first novel, The Joy Luck Club.[3] In 1987, Amy traveled with Daisy to China, where she met her three half-sisters.[8]
Amy had a difficult relationship with her mother. At one point, Daisy held a knife to Amy's throat and threatened to kill her while the two were arguing over Amy's new boyfriend. Her mother wanted Amy to be independent, stressing that Amy needed to make sure she was self-sufficient. Amy, later, found out that her mother had three abortions, while in China. Daisy often threatened to kill herself, saying that she wanted to join her mother (Amy's grandmother, who died by suicide).[9] She attempted suicide but never succeeded.[9] Daisy died in 1999[10] at the age of 83; she had Alzheimer's disease.[11]
While in school, Tan worked several odd jobs—serving as a switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker—before starting a writing career. As a freelance business writer, she worked on projects for AT&T, IBM, Bank of America, and Pacific Bell, writing under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms.[6] These projects had turned into a 90-hours-a-week workaholism.[15]
The Joy Luck Club
Early in 1985, Tan began writing her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, while working as a business writer. She joined a writers' workshop, the Squaw Valley Program, to refine her draft. She submitted a part of the draft novel as a story titled 'Endgame' to the workshop. Before attending the program, Tan read Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and was "amazed by her voice... [she] could identify with the powerful images, the beautiful language, and such moving stories." Later, many critics compared Tan to Erdrich. Author Molly Giles, who was teaching at the workshop, encouraged Tan to send some of her writing to magazines. Tan credits Giles with guiding her to the end of writing the book. It began with Giles' seeing a dozen stories in the 13 page draft submitted to the program. Stories by Tan, drawn from the manuscript of TheJoy Luck Club, were published by both FM Magazine and Seventeen, although a story was rejected by the New Yorker.[15]
After the acceptances and a rejection, Tan joined a new San Francisco writers' group led by Giles.[15] Giles recommended Tan to academic-turned agent Sandra Dijkstra, in 1987. In May of that year, an Italian magazine translated and published 'Endgame,' without permission. Dijkstra advised Tan to send her another story; "Waiting Between the Trees" arrived, written as an experiment to decide whether the stories collectively become a novel or a book of short stories. Dijkstra signed up Tan and asked Tan to write a synopsis for the book, along with an outline for other stories.[15]
Working with Dijkstra, Tan published several other parts of the novel as short stories, before it was sent as a draft novel manuscript. She received offers from several major publishing houses, including A.A. Knopf, Vintage, Harper & Row, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Simon and Schuster, and Putnam Books, but she declined them all, as they offered compensation that she and the agent considered to be insufficient.[15] Tan eventually accepted a second offer from G. P. Putnam's Sons for $50,000 in December 1987.[16]The Joy Luck Club consists of eight related stories about the experiences of four Chinese–American mother–daughter pairs.[17] Tan dedicated the book to her mother, with the following words: "You asked me, once, what I would remember. This, and much more."[11]
Being a realist, Tan had predicted to her husband that the novel would disappear from the bookstore shelves, after six weeks. She thought that most first novels meet that fate, within that time.[18] Putnam Books auctioned the reprint rights in April 1989,[19] which were bought by Vintage Books, the trade paperback division of Random House. Vintage's successful bid was at US$ 1.2 million. However, Random House decided to alter plans, and Ivy Books was assigned to print the paperback version, first, in the mass-market version, followed by Vintage, for a smaller audience, as a more expensively produced version.[20] When the paperback version came out, its hardcover had already undergone 27 printings, with sales of over 200,000 copies.[21] By 1991, the book had already been translated into 17 languages.[22]
The Kitchen God's Wife
Tan's second novel, The Kitchen God's Wife, also focuses on the relationship between an immigrant Chinese mother and her American-born daughter.[6] On its writing inspiration, Tan explained, "My mother said, when I started TheKitchenGod's Wife, that she liked The Joy Luck Club very much, it's very fictional, but next time, tell my story." Tan added that there are many fictionalized parts in the story narration, too.[21] Tan, later, referred to this book as the "much more" that she remembered, as mentioned in the dedication page of her first book.[11] This novel is significant, as it narrates a historical period of China between the 1930s and 1940s, including Nanjing Massacre.[23]
G. P. Putnam's Sons released the book in June 1991 and priced the hardcover at US$ 21.95.[22]
Other books
Tan's third novel, The Hundred Secret Senses, was a departure from the first two novels, in focusing on the relationships between sisters, inspired, partly, by one of the half-siblings Tan sponsored to the United States.[24]
Tan's fourth novel, The Bonesetter's Daughter, returns to the theme of an immigrant Chinese woman and her American-born daughter.[25]
In 2024, Tan published The Backyard Bird Chronicles, her illustrated account of birding as a coping mechanism during the divisive 2016 US Presidential election.[26]
Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir
4th Estate published Tan's memoir, in October 2017. The book cover was released earlier in April.[27] In the book, using family photographs and journal entries, she writes about the relationship with her mother, the death of her father and brother, stories of her half-sisters and grandmother in China, her diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease, and life as a writer.[28] In comparison to her fiction writing, Tan said a memoir is "unvarnished.” While writing a memoir, her recollection and sequence of events might not be orderly for the reader. They emerge according to their importance and how they shaped her.[29][30]
Other media
Tan was the "lead rhythm dominatrix,” backup singer and second tambourine with the Rock Bottom Remainders literary garage band. Before the band retired from touring, it had raised more than a million dollars for literacy programs. Tan appeared as herself in the third episode of Season 12 of The Simpsons, "Insane Clown Poppy."[31]
Tan's work has been adapted into several different forms of media. The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a play, in 1993; that same year, director Wayne Wang adapted the book into a film. The Bonesetter's Daughter was adapted into an opera, in 2008.[32] Tan's children's book, Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, was adapted into an PBS animated television show, also named Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat.[33]
In May 2021, the documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir was released in the American Masters series on PBS. (It was later released on Netflix.)[34]
Critical reception
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Tan's writing has been praised for its bravery in exploring both the personal struggles and triumphs of immigrant families.[35] Her first book, The Joy Luck Club, which is considered a prominent contribution to the Modern Period of American literature, was called "a jewel of a book" by the New York Times, noting Tan's "deep empathy for her subject matter" and the "rare fidelity and beauty" of her storytelling.[36]The Joy Luck Club went on to be a bestseller, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. That book, and her subsequent novels, have spent forty weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers list.[37]
Tan has received criticism, notably from Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who wrote that Tan's novels "are often products of the American-born writer's own heavily mediated understanding of things Chinese,” and author Frank Chin, who has said that her novels "demonstrate a vested interest in casting Chinese men in the worst possible light".[39][40] Tan, in response, however, has dismissed these criticisms, stating that her works arise from her personal family experiences as a Chinese-American and are not intended as a representation of the general Chinese/Asian American experience.[41][42]
Personal life
While Tan was studying at Berkeley, her roommate was murdered, and Tan had to identify the body. The incident left her temporarily mute. She said that every year, for ten years, on the anniversary of the day she identified the body, she lost her voice.[43]
Tan believes she developed chronic Lyme disease, a condition unrecognized by medical science, in 1998. She attributes health complications like epileptic seizures to chronic Lyme disease. Tan co-founded LymeAid 4 Kids, which helps uninsured children pay for treatment.[44][45][30]
Tan also developed depression, for which she was prescribed antidepressants. Part of the reason that Tan chose not to have children was a fear that she would pass on a genetic legacy of mental instability—her maternal grandmother died by suicide, her mother threatened suicide often, and she herself has struggled with suicidal ideation.[43]
Tan lives near San Francisco in Sausalito, California,[46] with her husband, Lou DeMattei (whom she married in 1974), in a house they designed "to feel open and airy, like a tree house, but also to be a place where we could live, comfortably, into old age" with accessibility features.[47] In recent years, she has developed interests in birding[48] and nature journaling.[49]
Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Chords and an Attitude (with Dave Barry, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Barbara Kingsolver) (1994)
Hard Listening, co-authored in July 2013, an interactive ebook about her participation in a writer/musician band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. Published by Coliloquy, LLC.[50]
Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2017, ISBN9780062319296 )
The Backyard Bird Chronicles, written and illustrated by Tan (Knopf, 2024, ISBN9780593536131)
^"Paperback-publishing switch surprises industry". Chicago Tribune. July 13, 1989. p. 12.
^ abWilson, Peter (July 14, 1990). "On common ground: The Joy Luck Club delves into the intensity and distance of the mother-daughter bond". The Vancouver Sun. p. 17.
^ abFong-Torres, Ben (June 12, 1991). "Can Amy Tan Do It Again? / Publisher, public hoping for a second blockbuster". San Francisco Chronicle. pp. B3.
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