Mother Tongue

American author Amy Tan was born in 1952 in Oakland, California, to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. After attending two colleges and obtaining a master’s degree in English and linguistics from San Jose State University, Tan found success as a published author with her first novel, The Joy Luck Club.

Much of Tan’s writing is focused on the Chinese American experience and Chinese culture; for example, The Joy Luck Club follows the narratives of four fictional Chinese immigrant mother-daughter pairs in San Francisco. Tan has received some criticism from authors who argue that her writing is too stereotypical and relies on American tropes of Chinese characters. That aside, Tan has received numerous awards for her writing, especially for The Joy Luck Club, which was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award (1989), won the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, and was selected for the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read.

Currently, Tan lives with her husband in San Francisco, where she continues to write and support her philanthropic pursuit of treating Lyme disease, which she suffers from, through her organization LymeAid 4 Kids.