American Literature Has Become Much More Diverse

¶ … American literature has become much more diverse as authors of different cultures that now in live in the United States write about their heritage or life in this country. One of these authors is Amy Tan.

Both of Tan's parents were Chinese immigrants. One of her first successful books, the Kitchen God's Wife, told of the traumatic early life of her mother, Daisy. She had divorced an abusive husband, had lost custody of her three daughters and was forced to leave them behind when escaping Shanghai before the Communist takeover in 1949. Tan's mother also witnessed Tan's grandmother committing suicide. When Tan's mother reached America, she married John Tan. They had three children, Amy and her two brothers. John Tan had earlier left China when the Chinese Revolution became too harrowing (Academy of Achievement).

Tragedy struck when Tan's father and oldest brother both died of brain tumors within a year of each other. Her mother moved the two remaining children to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school. Tan received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics at San Jose State University and married Louis DeMattei in 1974.

The Joy Luck Club, which was an international bestseller and became a movie, acknowledged Tan as a first-rate novelist. The plot explores the relationships between Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters. The mothers have moved from China to the United States purposely to provide their daughters with greater opportunities. To the mothers' surprise and concern, the daughters have grown up American and difficult if not impossible to understand. For example, the mothers expected their daughters to obey their elders and learn by observation and imitation, as they did in China. Because the mothers had internalized such values and knowledge, they believed it was already innately present in their daughters and only had to be revived. However, such behavior was alien to the girls. Through storytelling, each one of the four pairs tries to make herself understood to the other half. This universal book could easily be about any situation where the parent(s) and children are born and raised in different cultures.

Other books include The Hundred Secret Senses and The Bonesetter's Daughter, and a collection of non-fiction essays, entitled The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. Her latest book, Saving Fish From Drowning, relates the adventures experienced by a group of people who disappear on an art expedition in the jungles of Burma. She has also written two children's books The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat.