All About Amy Tan: Inside Amy Tan’s Best-Selling Novels

Amy Tan is a world-class American author of fiction and nonfiction. She is most well-known as the author of The Joy Luck Club (1989), her breakout first novel, which was on the New York Times bestseller list, was nominated for a National Book Award and, later, was adapted into a hit feature film. Since then, she’s published five more best-selling novels, two children’s books, The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), the latter of which was adapted into an animated television series for PBS Kids. She also wrote several nonfiction books, including The Opposite of Fate (2003) and Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir (2017), along with numerous short stories and essays for The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and National Geographic. Amy is now among the most celebrated contemporary fiction writers of her time and one of the deftest chroniclers of the immigrant and Asian American experience.

Amy was born in Oakland, California, and her parents were both Chinese immigrants. She attended high school in California and Switzerland, took classes from the University of California, Santa Cruz; the University of California, Berkeley; and San Jose City College; and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and linguistics from San Jose State University. She worked a range of jobs—from pizza maker to business writer—before working on her first novel.

World-class novelist Amy Tan has written six best-selling novels:

1. 1. The Joy Luck Club (1989): Amy’s blockbuster novel tells the interlocking stories of four Chinese American immigrant mothers living in San Francisco. These women form a mahjong group, the titular Joy Luck Club, through which their stories—and those of their American-born daughters—are told. The book was a finalist for several awards, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize.
2. 2. The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991): A novel that draws heavily on Amy’s own familial experiences, The Kitchen God’s Wife tells the story of a Chinese woman named Winnie who eventually moves to America after World War II.
3. 3. The Hundred Secret Senses (1995): The Hundred Secret Senses chronicles the bond between two sisters, Chinese-born Kwan and American-born Olivia, as they navigate their differences and create their own identities. The book was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996.
4. 4. The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001): Amy’s fourth novel, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, explores the relationship between a Chinese American woman and her immigrant mother. Amy transformed this novel into an opera libretto, which was performed at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, California.
5. 5. Saving Fish From Drowning (2005): Saving Fish From Drowning tells the story of 12 American tourists on the Burma Road from China to Myanmar, set within the uneasy political tension of Burma. The novel won an honorable mention from the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature.
6. 6. The Valley of Amazement (2013): Amy’s most recent novel, The Valley of Amazement, follows the relationship between a mother and daughter as the daughter grows up as a courtesan outside of Shanghai in historical China.

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