writer's background

12
WRITER’S BACKGROUND -AMY TAN- Group Members: Florinna & Brenda (TESL 1)

Upload: florinna-kennedy

Post on 21-Aug-2015

37 views

Category:

Education


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

WRITER’S BACKGROUND -AMY TAN-

Group Members:Florinna & Brenda (TESL 1)

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California, in 1952, and given the Chinese name En-Mai (Blessing of America). 

Tan’s mother (the subject of her second novel, The Kitchen God’s Wife) suffered at the hands of a brutal husband whom she eventually divorced. 

Her mother was forced to leave her three daughters behind in China.

Tan and her siblings were from her mother’s second marriage in the States.

Her father was a Chinese-born Baptist minister; her mother was the daughter of an upper-class family in Shanghai, China. 

When Tan was 15 years old, her older brother Peter and father both died of brain tumors within a year of each other, in the late 1960s. 

Daisy moved Amy and her younger brother John Jr. to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school.

In 1987 Amy traveled with Daisy to China. There, Amy met her three half-sisters.

Amy Tan now live in New York with her husband and a cat called Sagwa.

INTRODUCTION

Amy Tan gained immediate popularity and garnered high praise from critics with her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989). 

Joy Luck Club explores the unique situation of the Asian-American immigrant, but has universal appeal in its expression of the conflict inherent in mother-daughter relationships. 

Tan's next two novels were also both popular and highly acclaimed.

ESSENTIAL FACTS

Defying her mother’s wishes - Tan left the premedical program

she had been enrolled in and switched her major to English and linguistics. 

- She graduated with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from San Jose State University in 1974.

Although she enrolled in a doctoral program, Tan decided to take a job working with mentally challenged children in Alameda, California.

She also developed a program for developmentally disabled children during this time.

Before permanently turning to fiction writing, Amy Tan tried her hand at technical writing.

Amy Tan is a musician in a band called The Rock Bottom Remainders (“remainders” are the books that do not sell and become clearance bin fodder). 

The other members of the band include humorist Dave Barry, authors Stephen King and Barbara Kingsolver, and Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

MAJOR WORKS

The Joy Luck Club illuminates the nature of mother-daughter relationships in both cultures. 

The theme of Tan's novel focuses on the impact of past generations on the present. 

 The structure, in which the daughters' eight stories are enveloped by those of the mothers, implies that the older generation may hold a key to resolving the problems of the young.

The Kitchen God's Wife again tackles mother-daughter relationships, but this time Tan limits herself to one family and the relationship between Winnie Louie and her daughter Pearl. 

The relationship between Winnie Louie and Pearl is strained because of the secrets they keep from each other.

 It is only when they reveal their secrets that they establish a connection.

The Moon Lady (1992) is a children's story based on an episode from The Joy Luck Club which is derived from a Chinese legend. In The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), 

Tan focuses on the relationship between two sisters: Olivia, an American-born daughter of a Chinese father, and Kwan; her older Chinese-born sister from her father's previous marriage. 

The conflict in this novel arises from Kwan's mystical belief in ghosts and previous lives and Olivia's pragmatic attachment to the concrete and the real.

THANK YOU