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Displaced Persons
'Recommended for a wide range of readers, and a perfect book club choice.' - Library Journal, starred review
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Michael J. Sandel
Michael J. Sandel’s "Justice" course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard. Interested readers can take a seat in the lecture hall alongside Harvard College students, thanks to a 2009 PBS lecture series....
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Carol Lynch Williams
Carol Lynch Williams discussed The Chosen One, and what inspired her to write a book about polygamy.
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C. W. Gortner
A video interview with C.W. Gortner in which he talks about his 2010 historical novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici.
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Vanessa Woods
Vanessa Woods discusses her first book, Bonobo Handshake, and her experiences with the extrarodinary Bonobos.
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Amy Tan: Biography
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Browse a biography of Amy Tan
Plus: Book summary, excerpts and reviews at BookBrowse.com. |
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Biography
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California in 1952, several years after her mother
and father immigrated to the San Francisco Bay area from China. When she was
eight, her essay, "What the Library Means to Me," won first prize
among elementary school participants, for which Tan received a transistor radio
and publication in the local newspaper. Upon the deaths of her brother and
father in 1967 and 1968 from brain tumors, the family began a haphazard journey
through Europe, before settling in Montreux, Switzerland, where Tan graduated in
her junior year in 1969.
For the next seven years, Tan attended five schools. She first went to
Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, and there, on a blind date, met her
future husband, Lou DeMattei. She followed him to San Jose, where she enrolled
at San Jose City College. She next attended San Jose State University, and,
while working two part-time jobs, became an English honor's student and a
President's Scholar. In 1972, Tan graduated with honors, receiving a B.A. with a
double major in English and Linguistics. She was awarded a scholarship to attend
the Summer Linguistics Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In
1973, she earned her M.A. in Linguistics, also from San Jose State University,
and then was awarded a Graduate Minority Fellowship under the affirmative action
program at the University of California, Berkeley, where she enrolled as a
doctoral student in linguistics.
Following the murder of one of her closest friends, Tan left her doctoral
program before completing her degree, and for the next five years worked as a
language development consultant and project director for programs serving
disabled children from birth to age five. She then became a freelance business
writer specializing in corporate communications for such companies as AT&T,
IBM, and Pacific Bell.
In 1985, when a psychiatrist treating Tan for her self-described workaholism
fell asleep for the third time during one of their sessions, Tan quit therapy
and decided to write fiction instead. She attended her first writer's workshop,
the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, where she met the writer Molly Giles, who
later led a small workshop that often met in Tan's house. In 1986, Tan's first
short story, End Game appeared in the now defunct magazine, FM Five.
The story was later reprinted in Seventeen, which attracted the attention
of literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra, who encouraged Tan to continue writing
fiction. When Tan had completed three stories, her agent submitted them, along
with a proposal for a collection, which was bought by editor Faith Sale at G.P.
Putnam's Sons. In 1989, The Joy Luck Club was published and, through
word-of-mouth endorsements by independent booksellers, became a surprise
bestseller, logging more than 40 weeks on The New York Times list. Though
Tan wrote the book as a collection of linked short stories, reviewers
enthusiastically and erroneously referred to the book as an intricately woven
"novel." The label stuck. The Joy Luck Club was nominated for
the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award. It received the
Commonwealth Gold Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. It was adapted
into a feature film in 1994, for which Tan was a co-screenwriter with Ron Bass
and a co-producer with Bass and Wayne Wang.
Tan's second book, The Kitchen God's Wife, was published in 1991,
followed by The Hundred Secret Senses in 1995. Both books appeared on The
New York Times bestseller list. The Bonesetter's
Daughter, was published in February 2001. This was followed by a collection of essays in 2003, The Opposite of Fate : Memories of a Writing Life and Saving Fish From Drowning in late 2005.
Tan's short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Grand
Street, Harper's, The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, Ski, and others. Her
essay, "Mother Tongue" was chosen for Best American Essays in 1991 and
has been widely anthologized. Tan's books are often included as part of the
multicultural curriculum of high schools and colleges, an honor which caused her
much ambivalence and led her to writing a speech, "Required Reading and
Other Dangerous Subjects," which she has since delivered in universities
across the country. She is the editor for the 1999 edition of Best American
Short Stories. Her work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Catalan, Finnish,
Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Russian, Estonian, Serbo-Croation, Czech,
Polish, Hebrew, Greek, Tagalog, and Indonesian.
In addition, Tan has written two children's books, The Moon Lady
(1992) and The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994). The latter is now being
developed into a children's television series, and is part of a symphony program
of words and music produced and conducted by George Daughtery. Along with
novelist Stephen King and columnist Dave Barry, Tan is a member of the literary
garage band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, for which she sings the Nancy Sinatra
classic, "These Boots Are Made for Walking," to raise money for
literacy and first amendment rights groups. Tan's rendition of the pop culture
classic can be heard on the CD album, "Stranger than Fiction," which
benefits the PEN Writers Fund.
She has been married to Lou DeMattei since 1974. They live in the San Francisco Bay area with their pets. Since 1999 she has suffered from neurological Lyme disease and has become an outspoken advocate on behalf of people with the disease.
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This biography was last updated on 09/10/2006. |
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A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 1,500 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that
some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date,
inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors:
If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new. |
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| Editor's Choice |
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Brodeck
Phillipe Claudel |
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Set in an unnamed time and place, Brodeck blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck. |
The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
C. W. Gortner |
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From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen. |
Bonobo Handshake
Vanessa Woods |
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A young woman follows her fiancé to war-torn Congo to study extremely endangered bonobo apes - who teach her a new truth about love and belonging. |
Rock Paper Tiger
Lisa Brackmann |
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American Ellie Cooper, deserted by her husband, has made a number of friends in China. But suddenly one of them disappears, and security organizations are hounding her for information. Contacted through an online role-playing game by a group claiming to be friends of Lao Zhang asking her for... |
Beirut 39
Samuel Shimon |
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An exciting collection of the best new writing from the Arab world, by thirty-nine writers under thirty-nine. |
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Brooklyn Bridge by Karen Hesse |
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| This book is important, yet has been largely overlooked by reviewers and book clubs. It's not just a history of Hurricane Katrina, but a personal ...
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Three Cups of Tea by David O. Relin |
| This book is an amazing read. I opened it last week and I couldn't put it down. I cried a few times because I was overwhelmed by this man's ...
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