Amy Tan

Amy Tan (b. February 18, 1952) is an American writer of Chinese descent whose works explore mother-daughter relationships as well as relationships between Chinese American women and their immigrant parents. In 1993, Tan's adaptation of her most popular fiction work, The Joy Luck Club, became a commercially successful film.

She has written several other books, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Bonesetter's Daughter, and a collection of non-fiction essays entitled The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. Her most recent book, Saving Fish From Drowning, explores the tribulations experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition into the jungles of Burma. In addition, Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot on encouraging children to write.

Currently, she is the literary editor for West, Los Angeles Times' Sunday magazine, and did an uncredited rewrite on The Replacement Killers at the request of Mira Sorvino.

Life and influences
Amy’s father, John Tan, was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who came to America to escape from the Chinese Civil War. Her mother, Daisy, (who inspired Tan’s novel The Kitchen God’s Wife) had divorced her first husband (who was abusive) and lost custody of their three daughters, fled to America on the last boat before the Communist takeover in 1949. Her parents then met and married, and had three children, Amy and her two brothers.

Amy’s father and oldest brother both died of brain tumors within one year of each other; Daisy moved the family to the Netherlands and then Switzerland, where Tan finished high school. By this time, Tan and her mother were constantly fighting. She was enrolled at Linfield College by her mother, but transferred to San Jose City College, California, with her boyfriend, where she studied English and linguistics instead of her mother's desired pre-med; mother and daughter did not speak for six months. Tan received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in both English and Linguistics at San Jose State University. In 1974, Amy married her boyfriend Lou DeMattei, now a practicing tax attorney. They later settled down in San Francisco, and Tan (who kept her last name) began studying for a Doctorate in Linguistics, first at the UC Santa Cruz.

Tan started a business writing firm with a partner. Just as her new career was starting to take off, her mother became very sick. Tan promised her that if she got better, they would travel back to China so Daisy could show her daughter what she had left behind almost forty years before. Daisy regained her health, so Amy and her mother left for China in 1987. Tan says it was a revelation for her. "It gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult relationship with her mother, and inspired her to complete the book of stories she had promised her agent."

Daisy witnessed her mother committing suicide; Tan believed that her grandmother, her mother and herself all suffered from depression.

Early life
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California. When she was eight years old, she had won her first prize in a writing contest for elementary students with an essay entitled 'What the Library Means to Me.'

The first book that Tan ever bought was The Catcher in the Rye. At the time, owning the book was considered to be a badge of rebellion for students in her California school. The first copy Tan owned was confiscated from her when she was 14 years old to protect her from its supposed bad influence. This early experience with censorship left an impression on Tan, who notes: "I grew up to be such a stubborn person. I learned I had to think for myself."

As a child Tan was very rebellious. She credits her rebellious nature with starting her career as a writer. Having started out as a pre-med student in college, and being told by her teachers that math and science were her best skills, Tan decided to become an English major while in her first year of college. Just days after her employer told her that writing was her "worst skill" and that she should work to become an account manager, Tan took up non-fiction writing as a freelancer. Tan received a master's degree in linguistics at San José State University. Her first job was as a children's speech-language pathologist.

Recent Years
Since turning 40, Tan has been a member of the literary garage band Rock Bottom Remainders with Dave Barry, Matt Groening and Stephen King, Along with King, she appeared in an episode of The Simpsons

Accomplishments
Tan served as Co-producer and Co-screenwriter with Ron Bass for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club, and was the Creative Consultant for Sagwa, the Emmy-nominated television series for children. Her essays and stories are found in hundreds of anthologies and textbooks, and they are assigned as "required reading" in many high schools and universities and guest voiced an episode in "The Simpsons". She also performed as narrator with the San Francisco Symphony and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra playing an original score for "Sagwa" by composer Nathan Wang, and has lectured internationally at universities, including Stanford, Oxford, Jagellonium, Beijing, and Georgetown both in Washington DC and Doha, Qatar.

Awards

 * Finalist National Book Award
 * Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award
 * Finalist Los Angeles Time Fiction Prize
 * Bay Area Book Reviewers Award
 * Commonwealth Gold Award
 * American Library Associations's Notable Books
 * American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults
 * Selected for the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read
 * New York Times Notable Book
 * Booklist Editors Choice
 * Finalist for the Orange Prize
 * Nominated for the Orange Prize
 * Nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Award
 * Audie Award: Best Non-fiction, Abridged
 * Emmy Award
 * Parents Choice, Best Television Program for Children
 * Shortlisted BAFTA Film award, best screenplay adaptation
 * Shortlisted WGA Award, best screenplay adaptation

Novels

 * The Joy Luck Club (1989)
 * The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)
 * The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) (Shortlisted for the 1996 Orange Prize)
 * The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001)
 * Saving Fish from Drowning (2005).

Anthologies edited

 * The Best American Short Stories 1999 (1999) (with Katrina Kenison)

Children's books

 * The Moon Lady (1992) (with Gretchen Schields)
 * Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994) (with Gretchen Schields)

Non fiction

 * Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Cords and an Attitude (1994) (with Dave Barry, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Barbara Kingsolver)
 * Mother (1996) (with Maya Angelou, Mary Higgins Clark)
 * The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (2003)

Quotes

 * "I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable."


 * Tan began her talk by launching into an anecdote about coming upon a Cliffs Notes version of her first novel, "The Joy Luck Club," in a bookstore. Surprised to see her work among Cliffs Notes' "Lord Jim", "Ulysses" and "Hamlet" (all of which she used in college to get through her English literature classes), her first thought was, "I'm not dead yet." (The Opposite of Fate 10)


 * "I'm sitting in the $4.95 bookstore bleachers along with Shakespeare, Conrad and Joyce," she said. "I acknowledge that there is a fundamental difference that separates us. I am a contemporary author and they are not. And since I'm not dead yet, I can talk back." (The Opposite of Fate 10)