http://www.amytan.net/

Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. She was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. Both of her parents were Chinese immigrants.

Her father, John Tan, came to America to escape the turmoil of the Chinese Civil War. In China, Daisy, her mother, had divorced an abusive husband but lost custody of her three daughters. She was forced to leave them behind when she escaped on the last boat to leave Shanghai before the Communist takeover in 1949. Her marriage to John Tan produced three children, Amy and her two brothers.

In the late 1960s, after Amy's father and oldest brother died of brain tumors, Mrs. Tan moved her surviving children to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school, but by this time mother and daughter were in constant conflict.

 Amy Tan received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics at San Jose State University. In 1974, she and her boyfriend, Louis DeMattei were married. They were later to settle in San Francisco.

In 1987, Amy Tan and her mother visited China. The trip gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult relationship with her mother, and inspired many of her stories.

Novelso The Joy Luck Club (1989)o The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)o The Hundred Secret Senses

(1995)o The Bonesetter's Daughter

(2001)o Saving Fish from Drowning

(2005)

Children's bookso The Moon Lady, illustrated by

Gretchen Schields (1992)o Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese

Cat, illustrated by Gretchen Schields (1994)

Non-fictiono The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (2003)o Mother (with Maya Angelou, Mary Higgins Clark) (1996)o The Best American Short Stories 1999 (Editor, with Katrina

Kenison) (1999)

Amy Tan does not see herself as primarily a Chinese-American writer focusing on the immigrant experience. She objects to being limited because of her heritage.

“Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized group, they are writing a very specific story. “

Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow.

Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument."Pearl ah, have to go, no choice," my mother said when she phoned last week.

My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the World of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.

She often told me about her father, the Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain, about the cave where they found the dragon bones, how the bones were divine and could cure any pain, except a grieving heart.

The worst part about all of this is that I don't remember how I died. In those last moments, what was I doing? Whom did I see wielding the instrument of death? Was it painful? Perhaps it was so awful that I blocked it from my memory. It's human nature to do that. And am I not still human, even if I'm dead?

choice, chance, luck, faith, forgiveness, forgetting, freedom of expression, the pursuit of happiness, the balm of love, a sturdy attitude, a strong will, a bevy of good-luck charms, adherence to rituals, appeasement through prayer, trolling for miracles, a plea to others to throw a lifeline

It’s embarrassing to start my acceptance speeches with a list of errata, which then seems to

only show how truly unworthy I am

to be standing before the podium…

Urban Legends

Erratum 7: Tan has never had a fight with her publisher in a bookstore, nor did she scream and fling books around, causing other patrons to run for their lives. Tan claims her publisher and she have always had an amicable relationship, and the only time they fight is over the bill at a restaurant, but only as an ostentatious show of politeness. But most times, Tan lets her publishers win. They pay the bill.

http://amytan.net/

The book is a meditation on the divided nature of this emigrant life. – The New York Times

With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. – Amazon.com

When first published The Joy Luck Club spent 40 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list. It was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a recipient of the Commonwealth Gold Award and the Bay Area Book Award.

The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a feature film in 1994, for which Amy Tan was a co-screenwriter with Ron Bass and a co-producer with Bass and Wayne Wang.

The daughters know one side of their mothers, but they don't know about their earlier never-spoken of lives in China.

The mothers want love and obedience from their daughters, but they don't know the gifts that the

daughters keep to themselves.

The mothers, and the daughters:

oOo

• Suyuan Woo — Jing-mei "June" Woo

• An-mei Hsu — Rose Hsu Jordan

• Lindo Jong — Waverly Jong

• Ying-ying St. Clair — Lena St. Clair

The Joy Luck Club• Feathers From a

Thousand LI Away o The Joy Luck Club: Jing-Mei Woo

o Scar: An-Mei Hsu

o The Red Candle: Lindo Jong

o The Moon Lady: Ying-Ying St. Clair

• The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates

o Rules of the Game: Waverly Jong

o The Voice from the Wall: Lena St. Clair

o Half and Half: Rose Hsu Jordan

o Two Kinds: Jing-Mei Woo

• American Translation o Rice Husband: Lena St. Clair

o Four Directions: Waverly Jong

o Without Wood: Rose Hsu Jordan

o Best Quality: Jing-Mei Woo

• Queen Mother of the Western Skies

o Magpies: An-Mei Hsu

o Waiting Between the Trees:

Ying-Ying St. Clair

o Double face: Lindo Jong

o A Pair of Tickets: Jing-Mei Woo

"Feathers from a thousand Li Away" has the feel of a fairy tale. It is about the mothers' hopes for their daughters and about transformation. Although communication is impossible because of the language difference, the mother in the tale waits patiently to communicate with her daughter. The feather is the mothers' Chinese heritage, which they want to pass on to their daughters. This section gives us the mother's stories in China.

"The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates" introduces the mothers' protectiveness, which is expressed in warnings. The daughters ignore the warnings, to their own harm. This section presents the daughters' childhood traumas and development and their lack of communication with their mothers.

"American Translation" refers to the American daughters as the reflections of their Chinese mothers; hence, they are translations. The daughters, now adults, discover that their mothers‘ warnings and advice were valid.

"Queen Mother of the Western Skies" states the theme explicitly, "How to lose your innocence but not your hope“. The mothers, who lose their innocence through their terrible sufferings, never lose hope for their daughters. The living mothers and daughters come to an understanding, and there is hope for the daughters and their relationship with their mothers.

Themes in The Joy Luck Club

• IdentityThe mothers do not question their identities, having come from a stable culture into which their families were integrated. Their daughters, however, are confused about their identities.

• Communication between American daughters and Chinese mothersThe mothers see their duty as encouraging and pushing their daughters to succeed; they feel they have a right to share in their success (the Chinese view). The daughters see the mothers as trying to live through them and preventing them from developing as separate individuals (the American view).

• Connection of the past and the present.The mothers' past lives in China affect their daughters' lives in this country, just as the daughters' childhood experiences affect their identities and adult lives.

• Power of languageWithout proficiency in a common language, the Chinese mothers and American daughters cannot communicate.

• Chinese culture versus American culture

References

• http://amytan.net/ • http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/

melani/cs6/tan.html• http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/

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