Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. Her best-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages. In 1993, the book was adapted into a commercially successful film.
Tan has written several other bestselling novels, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter and Saving Fish from Drowning. 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 which aired on PBS. She
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The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a both a play and a film in 1993. The Bonesetter's Daughter was adapted into an opera in 2008. Tan's children's book Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat was adapted into a PBS animated television show. Tan was featured on The Simpsons episode "Insane Clown Poppy" on Season 12, Episode 3.
Bibliography
Novels
The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter's Daughter (2000), Saving Fish from Drowning (2005),Rules for Virgins (2012; an excerpt from The Valley of Amazement), The Valley of Amazement (2013).
Children's books
The Moon Lady, illustrated by Gretchen Schields (1992), Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, illustrated by Gretchen Schields (1994)
Non-fiction
Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Cords 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,
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Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer. She is an expert in writing about the mother-daughter relationship and the Chinese-American literature. Her family migrated from China to America so, She and her parents have personal experience about the diasporic culture and diasporic literature. Relationship are a delicate balance between the love and emotions of two individuals. Amy Tan novels offer an inside glimpse into several intricate mother-daughter relationship. Her characters suffer hardships as well as times of joy. There are many similarities in the mother and daughter relationship in the books of Amy
The experiences related and recorded in the novels The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao, and Obasan by Joy Kogawa give great insight to the internal and external struggles East-Asian immigrants face in the Western World, specifically Chinese-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Japanese-Canadians. Although the situations have certainly improved since the mid twentieth century, many of the issues and struggles the characters in the novels face are still real and ever-expanding for over five percent of the U.S. population. To
Amy Tan and Richard Rodriquez both grew up in Northern California, to immigrant families. Amy Tan became famous for her book, “The Joy Luck Club” that later became a movie. Richard wrote “The Hunger of Memory.” Before they became famous though, they both struggled to learn English. In “Mother Tongue.”
Tan that despite its evident differences to Cofer’s memoir is discussing the same trials ethnic, culturally diverse people experience. On page 881, Cofer recounts her first public poetry reading where an older woman mistook the Puerto Rican author for a waitress that ignites passion to the reading, “her lowered eyes told me that she was embarrassed,” [4] at the sheer power and conviction of Cofer enforcing that she is an educated Latin woman that deserves respect for her identity. While academically Tan’s teachers would always direct her to STEM subjects as viable career options which contradict the author's passion for writing despite not being on-par with the typical standard of what’s expected of a Chinese-American girl. However, what sets both pieces apart is that Tan does this examination through her mother and her own experiences as Chinese-Americans, while Cofer’s memoir encapsulates her own struggles that intertwine with the vast Latin woman’s
For instance, her famous novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’ depicts the Chinese mother and her American daughter relationship where they go through various circumstances trying to understand each other including the evolvement that comes in their relationships as the daughters know more about their mother’s life stories. Secondly, Tan considers the theme of identity in terms of Chinese immigrants and their life experiences as an immigrant in the United States. She reveals how the children born to the immigrants strive in an environment which is a mixture of American and Chinese influence. Moreover, Tan is found to have explored identity issues through her fictive creations and tackled the issue of authorial identity (Becnel, 2010). Similarly, romantic love is another subject included in the literary artworks of Amy Tan which considers the relationships and romance an important aspect of human’s life.
In the novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells the story of four Chinese mothers who immigrated to America in hopes of living the “American dream”. Through reading about each relationship, one can see how culture, personalities, and history can play a part in their bond with their daughters, positively and negatively. For example, Lindo and her daughter Waverly Jong have traits that contribute to their unhealthy mother-daughter relationship that is filled with conflict. When it comes to sharing her opinion, Lindo can be quite honest but at the same time wants Waverly to admire her. While Waverly is often irritable and sensitive and sees Lindo as an opponent, constantly trying to attack her.
Amy Tan is an Chinese-American novelist who is known for writing the daughter-mother relationship and the life of an Chinese-American. The themes in her novels shows a bond between mothers and daughters, love, forgiveness, and the differences between generation. Family, mother-daughter relationships, and divorce are her main topics. All of her novels also have a huge aspect of Chinese history and culture. This appears in many of her successful books like “The Kitchen God’s Wife”, “The Joy Luck Club”, and “Saving Fish from Drowning”.
Amy Tan’s novel “The joy luck club” highlights the significant struggles between Immigrant mothers’ and American-born daughters’ through their cultural barriers. Telling the different stories through the characters eyes about being raised in two different worlds. The mothers’ struggle to instil their American-born daughters with an understanding of their Chinese heritage. Also the daughters’ denial of their mothers’ attempts to assimilate their daughters’ into their Chinese heritage. They view their mothers’ as critical and mistaking their sentiment as the mothers’ failures to understand their own attitudes and ideals.
In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, mother and daughter relationships are put to the test. Four women meet to play a game of Chinese mahjong, keeping a tradition alive. Suyuan Woo, founder of the club, had a daughter named Jing Mei June Woo. Suyuan had two daughters which she expected both to succeed to her standards.
People may think that movies aren't as different as their book counterpart. While that may be true, there are many aspects between the book and the movie that aren't as similar. The book The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan share many similarities and differences with the movie by the same name. The book and the movie possess similar qualities; nevertheless there are many parts where the movie diverged from the book. However, although there are many differences, both movie and book place an emphasis on the same themes.
“Communication is the key to a successful relationship, attentiveness, and consistency. Without it, there is no relationship,” (Bleau). The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan. Set in the twentieth century, this novel depicts the life of four Chinese immigrant women escaping their past and their American-grown daughters. The novel reveals the mothers’ hardship-filled past and motivations alongside with the daughters’ inner conflicts and struggles.
Cultural differences are prevalent in both of Amy Tan’s novels, The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife. The mother’s face gender inequality based upon living in a patriarchal society in China, where they are oppressed with silence by their dominating husbands. Nevertheless, their daughters live in American, where they have an opportunity of freedom, have not faced constrainment in their lifestyles as their mother’s have. The independent girls have their own authority and mindset, being raised in western societies. Therefore, it is quite difficult for the mother’s and daughter’s to have a sense mutual understanding.
This also shows that the author knows well about what she is writing about and the way of life for the Chinese families. As well as this Amy Tan uses the different main characters in the book to explain their experiences and opinions, meaning the narrator of the book changes throughout the novel as well as the story that is told in the book depending on which character is the narrator. In the first chapter, told by Jing-Mei Woo it talks about what is currently going on in the Joy Luck Club, everything is changing due to the narrator’s mother death such as how now Jing-Mei Woo is expected to replace/take the position that her mother took at the Joy Luck Club, which is very important to Jing-Mei but may not have been mentioned if the story was told by another character. Whereas in the second chapter, which is told by one of the Joy Luck Club mothers, An-Mei Hsu, is mainly about her childhood and past experiences before moving to America, which could not have been told by any of the other main characters. This allows the reader to look at the different opinions of the different
Childhood is the foundation of who we become when we have grown. In Amy Tan’s novel “The Joy Luck Club”, we can see the transition from being immature to journey to adulthood in the lives of four mothers and their daughters. These women all make sacrifices in order to survive and One of them is betrothed to a wealthier, more important family for the honor of her own family. Because of her loyalty to her own family, she endures much emotional and psychological suffering and in turn becomes a stronger woman. Not stronger in body, but stronger in character.
Mother knows best. And yet so many daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club feel slighted by what the matriarchal figures in their lives have in mind for them, or rather, what they believe their mothers have in mind for them. A perfect storm of expectation, true and false, about love, about success, about being Chinese. The souring of mother-daughter relationships in The Joy Luck Club stem from unrealistic or ill conceived expectations that both parties hold for the other.
“She first began writing fiction as a form of therapy” (Encyclopedia). Tan’s works portray the relationship between a mother and daughter because she writes about the relationship between her and