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Amy Tan
Tan in 2018
Tan in 2018
Born Amy Ruth Tan
(1952-02-19) February 19, 1952 (age 73)
Oakland, California, U.S.
Occupation Writer
Education San Jose State University (BA, MA)
Notable works The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001)
Notable awards
  • National Humanities Medal
Spouse Lou DeMattei (m. 1974)
Signature
Amy Tan's signature.svg
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 譚恩美
Simplified Chinese 谭恩美
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin Tán Ēnměi
Yue: Cantonese
Jyutping Taam4 Jan1mei5

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 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

Tan was born in Oakland, California 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. Tan attended Marian A. Peterson High School in Sunnyvale for one year.

After the death of her father, Amy and her family moved to Switzerland, where she finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa, Montreux.

Tan 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.

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. 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. Stories by Tan, drawn from the manuscript of The Joy Luck Club, were published by both FM Magazine and Seventeen.

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."

By 1991, the book had 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-born daughter. On its writing inspiration, Tan explained, "My mother said, when I started The Kitchen God'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. Tan, later, referred to this book as the "much more" that she remembered, as mentioned in the dedication page of her first book. This novel is significant, as it narrates a historical period of China between the 1930s and 1940s, including Nanjing Massacre.

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.

Tan's fourth novel, The Bonesetter's Daughter, returns to the theme of an immigrant Chinese woman and her American-born daughter.

In 2024, Tan published The Backyard Bird Chronicles.

Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir

4th Estate published Tan's memoir, in October 2017. 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. 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.

Other media

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. 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.

In May 2021, the documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir was released in the American Masters series on PBS. (It was later released on Netflix.)

Personal life

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.

Tan is married to Lou DeMattei. They met on a blind date and got married in 1974.

Interesting facts about Amy Tan

  • She is the second of three children.
  • When she was fifteen, her father and elder brother Peter both died of brain tumors within six months of each other.
  • While Tan was studying at Berkeley, her roommate tragically died. The incident left her temporarily mute. She said that every year, for ten years, on the anniversary of the day, she lost her voice.
  • Tan and her mother did not speak for six months after Tan had dropped out of the Baptist college in Oregon, to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California.
  • Tan was sure that The Joy Luck Club would disappear from the bookstore shelves, after six weeks. She thought that most first novels meet that fate, within that time.
  • She lives near San Francisco in Sausalito, California.
  • In recent years, she has developed interests in birding and nature journaling.

Awards

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Amy Tan para niños

  • Chinese American literature
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