Amy Tan

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, and The Bonesetter's Daughter in 2001. All three books appeared on The New York Times bestseller list. Her first work of non-fiction," The Opposite of Fate" was published in 2003, and Tan is now at work on a new untitled novel. 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 more than thirty languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Catalan, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Russian, Estonian, Serbo-Croation, Czech, Polish, Hebrew, Greek, Romanian, Tagalog, Malaysian, and Indonesian. In addition, Tan has written two children's books, The Moon Lady (1992) and The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994). The latter became a children's television series for PBS called "Sagwa," and is also 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 America Scores, a after-school literacy program for inner city kids. Tan's rendition of the pop culture classic can be heard on the CD album, "Stranger than Fiction," which benefits the PEN Writers Fund. In her spare time, Tan enjoys downhill skiing, hiking, and travel to high adventure destinations. She attends the Westminster Dog Show each year and was the co-owner of the number one ranked Yorkshire Terrier of 2002, Ch. TipTop Come Fly With Me ("Frankie"), who also won the breed at Westminster in 2003. Tan serves on the Board of Directors of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, is the annual co-chair of the Authors Luncheon for the National Kidney Foundation in Northern California, and participates in numerous fundraising efforts for charitable organizations. She recently helped found LymeAid 4 Kids with the Lyme Disease Association, which provides funds for medical evaluation of children who are suspected of having Lyme disease. Tan lives in San Francisco and New York with her husband, Lou DeMattei, and their two canine companions, Bubba and Lilli.