Amy Tan

Amy Ruth Tan (born February 19, 1952) is an American author of Chinese heritage, best known for the 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.

Amy had met him on a blind date and married him in 1974.

Amy later 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.

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.

These projects had turned into a 90-hours-a-week workaholism.

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. Before attending the program, Tan read Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and was "amazed by her voice... [she] could identify with the powerful images, the beautiful language and such moving stories."

Later, many critics compared Tan to Erdrich.

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.

It began with Giles' seeing a dozen stories in the 13 page draft submitted to the program.

Stories by Tan, drawn from the manuscript of The Joy Luck Club, were published by both FM Magazine and Seventeen, although a story was rejected by the New Yorker''.

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In 1987, Amy traveled with Daisy to China, where she met her three half-sisters.

Amy had a difficult relationship with her mother.

At one point, Daisy held a knife to Amy's throat and threatened to kill her while the two were arguing over Amy's new boyfriend.

Her mother wanted Amy to be independent, stressing that Amy needed to make sure she was self-sufficient.

Amy later found out that her mother had three abortions while in China.

Daisy often threatened to kill herself, saying that she wanted to join her mother (Amy's grandmother, who died by suicide).

She attempted suicide but never succeeded.

After the acceptances and a rejection, Tan joined a new San Francisco writers' group led by Giles. Giles recommended Tan to academic-turned agent Sandra Dijkstra in 1987.

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 Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series that aired on PBS.

Daisy died in 1999 at the age of 83; she had Alzheimer's disease.

Amy and her mother did not speak for six months after Amy dropped out of the Baptist college her mother had selected for her, Linfield College in Oregon, to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California.

Tan's latest book is a memoir entitled Where The Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir (2017).

Amy was born in Oakland, California.

She is the second of three children born 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.

She recounts that her father and she would read the thesaurus together since “he was very interested in what a word contains.” This was the beginning of her path to become a writer as she wanted to use words to create stories to make herself feel understood.

Amy attended Marian A. Peterson High School in Sunnyvale for a year.

When she was fifteen, her father and older brother Peter both died of brain tumors within six months of each other.

Her mother, Daisy subsequently moved Amy and her younger brother, John Jr., to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa, Montreux.

During this period, Amy learned about her mother's previous marriage to another man in China, of their four children (a son who died as a toddler and three daughters).

She also learned how her mother left those children in Shanghai.

This incident was a key part of the basis for Amy's first novel, The Joy Luck Club.