Amy Tan

Amy Tan was born to Chinese immigrants in Oakland, California. After her father and brother both died of brain tumors within a year of each other, Amy moved with her mother and younger brother to Switzerland, where she finished high school. In 1987, Amy traveled with her mother to China, where she met her three half-sisters from her mother’s previous marriage to an abusive man; this experience would provide the basis for Tan’s bestselling first novel, The Joy Luck Club, published in 1989. Tan went on to write several other novels about Chinese-American female identity, including The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. She resides in Sausalito, California with her husband.