Presents a collection of critical essays about the works of Amy Tan.

Explores the life and career of author Amy Tan, from her childhood in Oakland, California, through her struggle to accept her Chinese heritage, to her career as a writer.

Profiles the award-winning author of "The Joy Luck Club."

Presents essays analyzing the author's work by subject matter, theme and motif.

With the publication of her first novel, ""The Joy Luck Club"", in 1989, Amy Tan was immediately recognized as a major contemporary novelist. Her work has received a great deal of attention and acclaim from feminist critics for its focus on issues of matrilineage and the ultimate triumph over female victimization. Her classic debut and the many novels that followed are unlocked and explored in this valuable resource, which provides helpful suggestions for students writing about Amy Tan.

Profiles the life and career of the writer Amy Tan.

The first study of Amy Tan's entire oeuvre, with individual chapters on The Joy Luck Club, The kitchen god's wife, The hundred secret senses and The bonesetter's daughter. The book offers close readings of her work in the context of broader debates about the representation of identity, history and reality.

Readers of the books in Todays Writers and Their Works will learn the story behind each writers story.

In the mid-1980s, Amy Tan was a successful but unhappy corporate speechwriter. By the end of the decade, she was perched firmly atop the best-seller lists with The Joy Luck Club, with more popular novels to follow. Tan's work--once pigeonholed as ethnic literature--resonates with universal themes that cross cultural and ideological boundaries, and prove wildly successful with readers of all stripes. Tender, sincere, complex, honest and uncompromising in its portrayal of Chinese culture and its affect on women, Amy Tan's work earned her both praise and excoriation from critics, adoration from fans, and a place as one of America's most notable modern writers. This reference work introduces and summarizes Amy Tan's life, her body of literature, and her characters. The main text is comprised of entries covering characters, dates, historical figures and events, allusions, motifs and themes from her works. The entries combine critical insights with generous citations from primary and secondary sources. Each entry concludes with a selected bibliography. There is also a chronology of Tan's family history and her life. Appendices provide an overlapping timeline of historical and fictional events in Tan's work; a glossary of foreign terms found in her writing; and a list of related writing and research topics. An extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index accompany the text.

This essential discussion of Amy Tan's life and works is a necessity for high school students and an enriching supplement for book club members. A tour-de-force in Asian American writing, Amy Tan has created works that are essential to high school and undergraduate literature classes and are often book club selections. Reading Amy Tan is a handy resource that offers both groups plot summaries of five of Tan's novels, as well as character and thematic analysis. The handbook also provides an overview of Tan's life and discusses how she emerged onto the scene as a novelist. Tan's typical themes, including Asian American issues and mother-daughter relationships, are examined in relation to today's current events and pop culture. Readers will also discover how and where they can find Tan on the Internet, and how the media has received her works. The "What Do I Read Next" chapter will help readers find other authors and works that deal with similar subjects. This handbook is an indispensable tool for both high school and public libraries.