Amy Tan Popular Books

Amy Tan Biography & Facts

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. Tan has earned a number of awards acknowledging her contributions to literary culture including the National Humanities Medal, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and the Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service. Tan has written several other novels, including The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001), Saving Fish from Drowning (2005), and The Valley of Amazement (2013). Tan has also written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series that aired on PBS. Tan's latest book is The Backyard Bird Chronicles (2024), an illustrated account of her experiences with birding and the 2016-era sociopolitical climate. Early life and education Amy was born in Oakland, California. 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. She recounts that her father and she would read the thesaurus together since “he was very interested in what a word contains.” This was the beginning of her path to become a writer as she wanted to use words to create stories to make herself feel understood. 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. 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. 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. In 1987, Amy traveled with Daisy to China, where she met her three half-sisters. 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). She attempted suicide but never succeeded. Daisy died in 1999 at the age of 83; she had Alzheimer's disease. Amy and her mother did not speak for six months after Amy dropped out of the Baptist college her mother had selected for her, Linfield College in Oregon, to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California. Amy had met him on a blind date and married him in 1974. Amy later received bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics from San José State University. She took doctoral courses in linguistics at University of California, Santa Cruz and University of California, Berkeley. Career 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. These projects had turned into a 90-hours-a-week workaholism. 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 The Joy Luck Club, were published by both FM Magazine and Seventeen, although a story was rejected by the New Yorker. After the acceptances and a rejection, Tan joined a new San Francisco writers' group led by Giles. Giles recommended Tan to academic-turned agent Sandra Dijkstra in 1987. In May that year, an Italian magazine translated and published 'Endgame' without permission. Dijkstra advised Tan to send to 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. 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 declined them all as they offered compensation that she and agent considered to be insufficient. Tan eventually accepted a second offer from G. P. Putnam's Sons for $50,000 in December 1987. The Joy Luck Club, consists of eight related stories about the experiences of four Chinese–American mother–daughter pairs. Tan dedicated the book to her mother with the following words: "You asked me once what I would remember. This, and much more." Being a realist, Tan had predicted to her husband that the novel would disappear from the bookstore shelves after six weeks. She thought that most first novels meet that fate within that time. Putnam Books auctioned the reprint rights in April 1989, which were bought by Vintage Books, the trade paperback division of Random House. Vintage's successful bid was at US$ 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. When the paperback version came out, its hardcover had already undergone 27 printings with sales of over 200,000 copies. By 1991, the book had already been translated into 17 languages. 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-bo.... Discover the Amy Tan popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Amy Tan books.