Amy (Ruth) Tan (1952- )

"Ultimately, the issues that Tan's novels raise are: Can one really assimilate? Does assimilation bring about equality or is the Chinese-American always in an inferior position within dominant American identity? Can one emphasize difference while maintaining equality? There is no resolution to these questions, but rather conclusions that always end in the mother-country, China."

Writers Directory, 15th ed. St. James Press, 1999.

Her Life:

In an article that appeared in People Weekly, she describes incidents that happened to her as a child. Many of them could have been from one of her books. When she was 14, her brother Peter and her father, who was a Baptist minister and an electrical engineer, were both diagnosed with brain tumors. Peter died in July 1967, at 16; my father died six months later. "My mother believed there was a curse on our family. My younger brother John and I lived with the notion that we too might die at any time. " She tried to speak to a counselor when she was crying, but he was no help.

The family moved to Switzerland for a while after the deaths. She thought that her mother probably reasoned that they could escape their curse. But some of her friends there were not the best influences--her mother eventually hired a detective and found out they were drug dealers. She was angry about losing her father and brother. She thought, "If I'm going to die tomorrow, I might as well go out with a bang." That year, a janitor at my school pushed me into a closet and tried to rape me. Somehow, I pushed my way out. When I told my teachers, they said, "You should be more careful."

Here are her words about another incident that happened with her Mother who was grieving over the loss of half the family. " One night she took a cleaver, backed me up against the wall and said, "I'm going to kill you, and then I'm going to kill John and myself. It's better. We'll soon be with Daddy and Peter." She was clearly crazy; I could see it in her eyes. She held the knife to my throat and I said, "Just do it. I don't care." Then something happened with me, and I started shouting, "I want to live!" What happened next is a complete blank to me, but obviously she must have put down the cleaver. "

In 1984, she went to a therapist. However, In four months of therapy, he fell asleep three times. "It didn't do a lot for my trust. I started writing fiction after that. Writing helps make sense of what I'm feeling. "

She started to take antidepressants, which helped her. Here are her words about that. "Of course, no pill can change who you are. I still have phobias: I get nervous about being out by myself where somebody might be able to harm me. My Yorkshire terriers, Bubba and Lilli, help. They sit on my lap when I give readings on tour. I'm also afraid of driving, but with the dogs next to me I can drive a few miles to my friend's house. In the meantime, I use the Internet to link up with people who share my problems. It's very supportive. Nobody says, "Well, you're crazy to think that." It's great. For a long time, I think I didn't know how to be happy, and I didn't trust happiness--I felt that if I had it, I would lose it. But today, I am basically a happy person."

Her Books:

Amy Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club, nominated for a National Book Award in 1989, consists of finely wrought short stories told by four sets of Chinese mothers and American-born daughters as they gossip after their weekly mah-jong game.

In her second work, The Kitchen God's Wife, a mature Chinese-American woman and her mother, emotionally and culturally alienated from one another, both reveal forbidden secrets--disclosures that finally draw them together. As the mother is forced by another relative to tell her daughter her life story of growing up in China against the backdrop of World War II, the American-born daughter must reflect on her own life and behavior. The story shows how one can prosper in the future in spite of a tragic past.

In this charming original folktale, a mother cat tells her kittens the true story of their ancestry. Schields's energetic illustrations prove an atmospheric counterpart to Tan's vivacious writing.

This book again captures the sense of living in two worlds. San Francisco in the the 1990's with its Chinese take-out food, and bargain shopping pales before Southern China and the emergence of the Heavenly King, who warred against the entire Manchu Dynasty. Olivia Yee, born in San Francisco of Chinese and American parentage, has a Chinese half-sister, Kwan Li, who arrives from China and proves to be a strange teen-ager indeed, for Kwan has "yin eyes." She can see those who have died and dwell the World of Yin. At the end of the novel, Olivia returns to the realm of the actual and sums up Kwan's teachings: "I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place, but the vastness of the soul. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true."

Ruth Young lives in San Francisco with her longtime partner and his teen-age daughters. Her father died when she was an infant, leaving her mother, Chinese-born LuLing, to raise her. Now LuLing has senile dementia, and Ruth urgently wants to find out the real story of her mother's upbringing. The discovery of LuLing's handwritten memoir helps Ruth make sense of her mother's stories and actions, allowing her a better sense of her own actions and relationships.