Amy Tan

Amy Tan was born in 1952 in Oakland, California, to Chinese immigrants. Tan lived with her family in the Oakland area until high school, when her older brother and father died of brain tumors within a year of each other. Fearing a curse, Tan’s mother uprooted Tan and her younger brother from their home, and the three of them traveled throughout Europe, eventually ending up in Switzerland. Tan has spoken publicly about her fraught relationship with her mother, who was often suicidal. When Tan was a teenager, her mother attempted to kill Tan, her brother, and herself so that they could reunite with Tan’s deceased father and brother. Tan returned to the U.S. to attend college, graduating from San José State University with degrees in English and linguistics. She then worked as a freelance business writer and began writing fiction in 1985. Her first story was published in 1986 in the literary magazine FM Five. She eventually received multiple offers to publish a collection of her short stories. This project developed into a novel, The Joy Luck Club, which was published in 1989. A film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club, for which Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter, was released in 1993. Tan’s other novels include The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement. Her works draw from her own experiences and her mother’s life in China, and she often explores the tensions between American daughters and their immigrant mothers. Tan’s essays and short stories are frequently anthologized, and she has been nominated for numerous awards throughout her career, including the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has lectured internationally at universities and appeared as herself on The Simpsons and Sesame Street. Tan lives with her husband and their dogs near San Francisco.