Amy Tan

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Amy Tan
Tan in 2007
Tan in 2007
BornAmy Tan
(1952-02-19) February 19, 1952 (age 72)
Oakland, California, U.S.
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSan Jose State University (BA, MA)
UC Santa Cruz & UC Berkeley (dropped out)
Notable worksThe Joy Luck Club (1989)
Website
www.amytan.net
Amy Tan
Traditional Chinese譚恩美
Simplified Chinese谭恩美

Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese American experience. Her novel The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a film in 1993 by director Wayne Wang.

Tan has written several other novels, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement. She also wrote a collection of non-fiction essays entitled The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. In addition to these, Tan has 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.

Though she has won several awards for her work, Tan has also received substantial criticism for her "complicity in perpetuating racial stereotypes and misrepresentations as well as gross inaccuracies in recalling details of the Chinese cultural heritage".[1][2] This, along with her frequently negative depiction of Chinese culture in her work, has led several writers and scholars to accuse Tan of pandering to Western presumptions and prejudices about Chinese people.[3][4][5]

Personal life

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 in order to escape the chaos of the Chinese Civil War.[6][7] Tan attended Marian A. Peterson High School in Sunnyvale for one year. When she was fifteen years old, her father and older brother Peter both died of brain tumors within six months of each other.[8]

Daisy subsequently moved Amy and her younger brother, John Jr., to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa, Montreux.[9] 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), and how her mother left these children behind in Shanghai. This incident was the basis for Tan's first novel The Joy Luck Club.[7] In 1987, Amy traveled with Daisy to China. There, Amy met her three half-sisters.[10]

Tan and her mother did not speak for six months after Tan 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.[7][11][12] Tan met him on a blind date and married him in 1974.[8][11][12] Tan later received bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics from San Jose State University. She also participated in doctoral studies in linguistics at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, but abandoned her doctoral studies in 1976.[13]

While in school, Tan worked 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.[8]

In 1998, Tan contracted Lyme disease, which went misdiagnosed for a few years. As a result, she suffers complications like epileptic seizures. Tan co-founded LymeAid 4 Kids, which helps uninsured children pay for treatment.[14] She wrote about her life with Lyme disease in The New York Times.[15]

Tan resides in San Francisco, California, with her husband in a house they designed "to feel open and airy, like a tree house, but also to be a place where we could live comfortably into old age" with accessibility features.[16]

Work and themes

Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club, consists of sixteen related stories about the experiences of four Chinese American mother-daughter pairs.[17] Tan's second novel, The Kitchen God's Wife, also focuses on the relationship between an immigrant Chinese mother and her American-born daughter.[8] Tan's third novel, The Hundred Secret Senses, was a departure from the first two novels, in focusing on the relationships between sisters.[citation needed] Tan's fourth novel, The Bonesetter's Daughter, returns to the theme of an immigrant Chinese woman and her American-born daughter.[18]

Adaptations

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.[19] Tan's children's book Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat was adapted into a PBS animated television show.[20]

Criticism

Though she has won several awards for her work, Tan has also received substantial criticism for her "complicity in perpetuating racial stereotypes and misrepresentations as well as gross inaccuracies in recalling details of the Chinese cultural heritage".[1] Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote that Tan's novels "appear to possess the authority of authenticity but are often products of the American-born writer's own heavily mediated understanding of things Chinese".[2] Another writer stated that the popularity of Tan's work can mostly be attributed to Western consumers "who find her work comforting in its reproduction of stereotypical images".[3]

The often negative depiction of Chinese culture and Chinese men in Tan's work has raised eyebrows, with one scholar going so far as to say that the storylines of her novels "demonstrate a vested interest in casting Chinese men in the worst possible light".[4] This, in addition to the lack of cultural and historical accuracy in Tan's work, has led several writers and scholars to accuse Tan of "pandering to the popular imagination" of Westerners regarding Chinese people.[5]

Bibliography

Short stories

Novels

Children's books

Non-fiction

  • Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Chords and an Attitude (with Dave Barry, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Barbara Kingsolver) (1994)
  • Mother (with Maya Angelou, Mary Higgins Clark) (1996)
  • The Best American Short Stories 1999 (Editor, with Katrina Kenison) (1999)
  • The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2003, ISBN 9780399150746)
  • Hard Listening, co-authored in July 2013, an interactive ebook about her participation in a writer/musician band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. Published by Coliloquy, LLC.[21]

Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir copyright 2017

Awards

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Lee, Jonathan (2015). Chinese Americans: The History and Culture of a People: The History and Culture of a People. p. 334.
  2. ^ a b Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia (1995). Sugar Sisterhood: Situating the Amy Tan Phenomenon. p. 55.
  3. ^ a b Lee, Lily (2003). 中國婦女傳記詞典: The Twentieth Century, 1912-2000. p. 503.
  4. ^ a b Yin, Xiao-huang (2000). Chinese American Literature Since the 1850s. p. 235.
  5. ^ a b Huntley, E. D. (2001). Maxine Hong Kingston: A Critical Companion. p. 58.
  6. ^ Sherryl Connelly (February 27, 2001). "Mother As Tormented Muse Amy Tan Drew On A Dark Past For 'Daughter'". nydailynews.com. New York Daily News. Archived from the original on March 14, 2011. Retrieved December 15, 2013.
  7. ^ a b c "Amy Tan Biography". Archived from the original on July 2, 2008. Retrieved May 4, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ a b c d Huntley, E.D. (1998). Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. pp. 5–7, 80. ISBN 0313302073.
  9. ^ "The Archives of my Personality", address to American Association of Museums General Session (Los Angeles), May 26, 2010
  10. ^ "Penguin Reading Guides - The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan". Archived from the original on July 24, 2010. Retrieved August 7, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ a b Kinsella, Bridget (August 9, 2013). "'Fifty Shades of Tan': Amy Tan". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  12. ^ a b Tauber, Michelle (November 3, 2003). "A New Ending". People Magazine. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  13. ^ "Amy Tan Biography". Archived from the original on July 2, 2008. Retrieved July 19, 2008. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  14. ^ Stone, Steven (August 2015). "Summertime Blues: To DEET or not to DEET...". Vintage Guitar. p. 60.
  15. ^ Amy Tan (August 11, 2013). "My Plight with the Illness". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
  16. ^ Tan, Amy (July 30, 2014). "Amy Tan on Joy and Luck at Home: The novelist builds a home she can grow old in". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  17. ^ "Amy Tan." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 257. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center.
  18. ^ Hoyte, Kirsten D. Contradiction and Culture: Revisiting Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" (Again). Publication. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/essays/15966483/contradiction-culture-revisiting-amy-tans-two-kinds-again
  19. ^ Kosman, Joshua (September 15, 2008). "Opera review: 'Bonesetter's Daughter'". SF Gate. Retrieved January 31, 2017.
  20. ^ "Sagwa: About the show". PBS Kids.
  21. ^ "Hard Listening".
  22. ^ "National Book Awards". Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  23. ^ "All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  24. ^ "APALA: 2005-2006 Awards".
  25. ^ "The Big Read: The Joy Luck Club".
  26. ^ "1993-2008 Golden Plate Recipients". Retrieved October 12, 2014.
General

External links