Research Guides: Amy Tan: Biography

Amy Tan (Born February 19, 1952)

Tan’s first book was a surprising best seller in both hardcover and paperback. It received the Commonwealth Club Gold Award for fiction, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for fiction, and the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The Joy Luck Club was made into a popular film in 1993, cowritten and coproduced by Tan, and was adapted for the stage in 1999. For nearly a year, Tan tried to start The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991). Again, her subjects were a Chinese mother and a Chinese American daughter, but this time she focused upon the mother’s life in China. The novel, based on Daisy Tan’s tumultuous past, received Booklist’s editor’s choice honors and was nominated for the Bay Area Book Reviewers award. Continue . . .

Source: McCarthy, Joanne. “Amy Tan.” Critical Survey of American Literature, Dec. 2016, pp. 2932–2938. From Literary Reference Center Plus database.

Book Collection

Resources

Amy Tan National Humanities Medal - 2021 Born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in a succession of twelve homes by the time she graduated from high school. At age 15, she lost her older brother and father to brain tumors. After this tragedy, her mother, fearing a curse, impulsively took Amy and her younger brother to Europe to see the world. After several missteps, the three wanderers settled in Montreux, Switzerland, where Amy fell in love, nearly eloped, played an unwitting role in the drug bust of friends, and still managed to graduate from high school one year early....
The Joys and Sorrows of AMY TAN Profiles author Amy Tan. Possible reasons for her depression, including having a suicidal mother; Description of her book 'The Bonesetter's Daughter'; Success of her book 'The Joy Luck Club,'; Biographical information.
Literary Criticism Sources
Mother Tongue The author discusses the different forms of the English language she uses. A novelist, author of "The Joy Luck Club," words are her stock in trade and she finds herself using rather complicated forms of standard English. With her mother, an immigrant from China whose English is not fluent, she uses simplified English and finds this sometimes leads to greater clarity, which benefits her writing.
Peanut's Fortune Presents a short story entitled `Peanut's Fortune,' by Amy Tan, which is about how a fortune-teller's guesses turned into reality for the lead character.

From Films On Demand Database:

TEDTalks: Amy Tan—Where Does Creativity Hide? Amy Tan is the author of several bestselling novels, including the The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and the beloved Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages and became a commercially successful film in 1993. Tan has said in the past that “books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.” In this TEDTalk, she speaks further on the human response to suffering, digging deep into the creative process and searching for hints of how hers evolved.
Amy Tan: Voice and Narrative Voice is the writer's evolving theories of the universe. The writer is the “god” of the story’s universe. Narrative is the writer imposing a structure over randomness and connecting ideas.
Amy Tan: Inspiration and Muse A writer’s inspiration or muse is when things come together. Tan’s muse is the way she believes things happen in life. Inspiration comes in a variety of ways. Research is necessary for writing fiction.
Amy Tan: Process and Place in Fiction The process of writing is most important to Tan. The sense of place grounds Tan in a story. She describes the place in China that inspired “The One Hundred Secret Senses.”
How Amy Tan's Family Stories Made Her A Storyteller Amy Tan was going to write a book about writing. But what came to her mind instead were memories of childhood, reflections on family treasures, photos, documents. In Where The Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, Tan explores revelations about her family and how her experiences steered her toward a life as an author. Tan joins Jeffrey Brown for a conversation.
Finding Characters for Her Novel Amy Tan shares how she incorporated the experiences, character traits, and deaths of three friends, Eric, Steve, and Elsa, into her novel “The One Hundred Secret Senses.”
Coincidences in Writing Her Novel Amy Tan shares the many coincidences of events that occurred while she researched and wrote “The One Hundred Secret Senses.” Most coincidences involved the details for the setting in the novel.
Amy Tan's Muse Creativity might begin when a person begins to ask, "Who am I? Why do I exist?" There may be false evidence of a muse deficit. This happens when children get poor grades on creative projects. Amy Tan shares more of her attributes and experiences.
Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir 2021 Writer Amy Tan’s hit debut novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989), catapulted her to commercial and critical success. Born to Chinese immigrant parents into 1950’s America, Amy Tan’s painful family legacy inspired her stories of women without the power to choose their lives. Journey through the groundbreaking author’s life and career with archival imagery, artful animation and original interviews. Distributed by PBS Distribution.