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Amy Tan

American novelist (born 1952)

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Tan has earned a number of awards including the National Humanities Medal, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and the Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service.

Tan is also the author of 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. Her latest book is The Backyard Bird Chronicles (2024), an illustrated account of her experiences with birding and the 2016-era sociopolitical climate.

Biography

Amy Tan 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, to escape the chaos of the Chinese Civil War. John Tan was pastor of First Chinese Baptist Church of Fresno, California when Amy was born. 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 becoming 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 moved the family 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 catalyst for Amy's first novel, The Joy Luck Club. In 1987, Amy traveled with Daisy to China, where she met her three half-sisters.

Amy had a problematic relationship with her mother, who once held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her while arguing over Amy's new boyfriend. Her mother wanted Amy to be independent and 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. Daisy died in 1999 at the age of 83; she had Alzheimer's disease.

After Amy dropped out of Linfield College in Oregon to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California, she did not speak to her mother for six months. Amy met her boyfriend 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 as a switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker before starting a writing career.

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