Amy Tan

Tan, Amy - 1952–, American novelist, b. Oakland, Calif. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she has taken for her theme the lives of Asian-Americans and the generational and cultural differences among them, concentrating on women's experiences. Tan's novels include The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), and The Hundred Secret Senses (1995). She has also written a Read More...

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Amy Tan

1.

Amy Tan
by Harold Bloom. 174 pgs.

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-- Brings together the best criticism on the most widely read poets, novelists, and playwrights
-- Presents complex critical portraits of the most influential writers in the English-speaking world -- from the English medievalists to contemporary writers

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Title Page

Amy Tan

Contents

Editor's Note

Introduction

Theorizing Ethnicity and Subjectivity: Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey and Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club

Generational Differences and the Diaspora in the Joy Luck Club

Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club

Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club

Only Two Kinds of Daughters: Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in the Joy Luck Club

Chinese American Women, Language, and Moving Subjectivity

The Spirit Within

Swan-Feather Mothers and Coca-Cola Daughters: Teaching Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club

The Hundred Secret Senses

The Semiotics of China Narratives in the Con/Texts of Kingston and Tan

Chronology

Contributors

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index
2.

Amy Tan: A Critical Companion
by E. D. Huntley. 168 pgs.

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Amy Tan has established a reputation as a major novelist of not only the Asian American experience but the universal experience of family relationships. With the publication of her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, which touched the hearts of millions of readers, Tan joined the ranks of major contemporary novelists. Adapting her brand of Chinese traditional talk story as a vehicle for exploring the lives of the mothers and daughters at the center of her novels, Tan allows readers to experience the lives of her characters from multiple perspectives in parallel and intersecting narratives. In this first full-length study of her work, E.D. Huntley explores the fictional worlds Tan has created in her three novels, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, and The Hundred Secret Senses. Examining the characters, narrative strategies, plot development, literary devices, setting, and major themes, Huntley explores the rich tapestry created in each of the novels.

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Title Page

Title Page

Publication/Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Advisory Board

Contents

Series Foreword

Acknowledgments

1: The Life of Amy Tan

2: Amy Tan and Asian American Literature

3: The Joy Luck Club (1988)

4: The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)

5: The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)

Bibliography

Index

About the Author
3.

Asian-American Women Writers ("Amy Tan" begins on p. 81)
by Harold Bloom. 142 pgs.

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Asian‐ American Women Writers

Contents

The Analysis of Women Writers

Introduction

Diana Chang B. 1934

Edith Maude Eaton 1865-1914 Winnifred Eaton 1875-1954

Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn B. 1949

Maxine Hong Kingston B. 1940

Joy Kogawa B. 1935

Bharati Mukherjee B. 1938

Amy Tan B. 1952

Linda Ty-Casper B. 1931

Jade Snow Wong B. 1919

Hisaye Yamamoto B. 1921

Wakako Yamauchi B. 1924
4.

Private Voices, Public Lives: Women Speak on the Literary Life ("Mother/Daughter Dialog(ic)s in, around and about Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club" begins on p. 111)
by Nancy Owen Nelson. 310 pgs.

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Private Voices, Public Lives Women Speak on the Literary Life

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

I: The Work/Love Paradigm

"Tangled Together like Badly Cast Fishing Line" the Reader and the Text in Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"

Love, Work, and Willa Cather

The Voices from the Little House

Rewriting the Love Plot Our Way Women and Work

II: The Text as Mirror

Nancy Drew—the Perfect Solution

Wrestling with the Mother and the Father "His" and "Her" in Adrienne Rich

In Search of the Androgynous Self

From Robot to Roarer

A White Bird Flying Straight Down

Being an I-Witness—my Life as a Lesbian Teacher

Mother/Daughter Dialog(ic)s In, Around and About Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club

Offshore Women a Personal Log

Metamorphosis Mutations of a Hungarian Continental Drifter into an American Woman

Trapped—then Released—by a Gift from the Sea

Speaking Across Boundaries and Sharing the Loss of a Child

Trailing West

Dakota: a Spiritual Geography, Revisited

III: Teaching and Writing the Self

Growing Up with Doctor Spock an Auto-Biography

From Impersonators to Persons Breaking Patterns, Finding Voices

Search and Rescue

Diversity and the American Dream

Women's Literature as Individuation for College Students

Finding My Voice Caught Between a Woolf and a Crane

Literary Criticism with a Human Face Virginia Woolf and the Common Reader

Contributor Biographies

Index to Authors, Characters, Subjects
5.

Generational Differences and the Diaspora in the Joy Luck Club, in Critique
by Walter Shear. 7 pgs.

Journal Article
6.

Becoming and Bonding: Contemporary Feminism and Popular Fiction by American Women Writers (Discussion of The Joy Luck Club begins on p. 68)
by Katherine B. Payant. 246 pgs.

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Expounding the view that the feminist movement has both encouraged and enriched literature by women, Katherine Payant examines a large body of immensely popular but, for the most part, critically neglected fiction of the period from the late 1960s through the early 1990s, relating these writers and works to the women's movement and feminist theories. The study concentrates on popular fiction, which is seen as evidence of the widespread influence of feminism and as a vehicle for dissemination of "mainstream" feminist ideas. Chapters dealing with the 1970s and 1980s survey relevant feminist theories and tie them to representative novels. Chosen for special focus in individual chapters are Marge Piercy, Mary Gordon, and Toni Morrison, who reflect divergent perspectives on feminism. Written in accessible prose, this work will deepen the appreciation of readers of these novelists and increase their understanding of the effect of social movements on the arts.

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Title Page

Copyright Acknowledgments

Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

Notes

2 The Bildungsroman of The 1970s: Growing Up Female In Patriarchy

Notes

3 New Developments in The 1980s: Bonds Between Women

Notes

4 Marge Piercy: the Radical Tradition

Notes

5 Mary Gordon: Christianity And Feminism"

Notes

6 Toni Morrison: African- American Women and Men, An Uneasy Alliance

Notes

7 Conclusion

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author
7.

"Only Two Kinds of Daughters": Inter-Monologue Dialogicity in The Joy Luck Club, in MELUS
by Stephen Souris. 25 pgs.

Journal Article
8.

Imagining the Nation: Asian American Literature and Cultural Consent (Chap. 5 "Genes, Generation, and Geospiritual (Be)longings")
by David Leiwei Li. 268 pgs.

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Since the 1970's, when Maxine Hong Kingston began publishing her prize-winning books, we have seen an explosive growth in Asian American literature, a literature that has won both popular and critical acclaim. Literary anthologies and critical studies attest to a growing academic interest in the field. This book seeks to identify the forces behind this literary emergence and to explore both the unique place of Asian Americans in American culture and what that place says about the way Americanness is defined.
The author is preoccupied with how the sense of the nation is disseminated through the practice of reading and writing, and he argues that Asian American literature is a productive discursive negotiation of the contemporary contradiction in American citizenship. By analyzing the textual strategies with which literary Asian America is represented, the book shows how the "fictive ethnicity" of the nation continues to exert its regulatory power and suggests how we can work toward a radical American democratic consent.
Through nuanced readings of exemplary texts, the author delineates how Asian American literary production has become a site for the creation of Asian American subjects and community. The texts range from Kingston's enigmatic Tripmaster Monkey to the seductive cunning of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club; from Bharati Mukherjee's romantic Jasmine to the geocultural ambivalence of David Mure's Turning Japanese; and from the transvestic subversion of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly to the transpirational tropes of David Wong Louie's Pangs of Love.
Imagining the Nation integrates a fine appreciation of the formal features of Asian American literature with the conflict andconvergence among different reading communities and the dilemma of ethnic intellectuals caught in the process of their institutionalization. By articulating Asian American structures of feeling across the nexus of East and Wes

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Title Page

Asian America

Acknowledgments

Contents

Introduction Alienation, Abjection, and Asian American Citizenship

Part I Emergence

1 Aiiieeeee! and The Predicament of Asian American Articulation

2 Can Maxine Hong Kingston Speak? The Contingency Of The Woman Warrior

Claiming America Part II

3 Canon, Collaboration, And the Corporeality Of Culture

4 American Romances, Immigrant Incarnations

Part Iii Whither Asia

5 Genes, Generation, And Geospiritual (be)longings

6 Eccentric Homes: Topography, Pedagogy, And Memory

Part Iv Representation Reconsidered

7 The Look, the Act, The Transvestic, and The Transpirational Asian

8 Ethnic Agency And the Challenge Of Representation

Conclusion Asian American Identity In Difference and Diaspora

Reference Matter

Notes

Works Cited

Index
9.

"Chinese and Dogs" in Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses: Ethnicizing the Primitive a la New Age, in MELUS
by Sheng-mei Ma. 16 pgs.

Journal Article
10.

Mules and Dragons: Popular Culture Images in the Selected Writings of African-American and Chinese-American Women Writers (Chap. 5 "Sui Sin Far to Amy Tan")
by Mary E. Young. 158 pgs.

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Young compares and contrasts the histories of African-American and Chinese-American women, then analyzes each group's response to the stereotyped images that have become a part of American cultural history. Her vehicle for this study is fiction from writers as diverse as James Fenimore Cooper, William Wells Brown, Ambrose Bierce, and Frank Chin, and from Euro-American, African-American, and Chinese-American writers who created the dominant stereotypes. Young examines the response to these stereotypes in the writings of key African and Chinese-American women writers such as Linda Brent, Frances Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Sui Sin Far, Chang Hua, and Amy Tan.

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Title Page

Recent Titles in Contributions in Women's Studies

Contents

Preface

Chapter One "John Chinaman" As "Sambo"

Notes

Chapter Three The Female Response: Harriet E. Wilson To Alice Walker

Chapter Four Dragon Ladies, Susie Wongs, And Passive Dolls

Chapter Five Sui Sin Far to Amy Tan

Chapter Six African-Americans And Chinese-Americans

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author
11.

The Literary West: An Anthology of Western American Literature ("Amy Tan" begins on p. 357)
by Thomas J. Lyon. 450 pgs.

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Contents

Preface

Introduction the Conquistador, the Lone Ranger, and Beyond

A Western Chronology, with 200 Significant Titles

Kathlamet Chinook (oral Tradition)

Pedro Font

Lewis and Clark

John Muir

Clarence Dutton

Sarah Winnemucca

Hamlin Garland

Owen Wister

Mary Austin

Jack London

Zane Grey

Willa Cather

Dorothy Scarborough

Robinson Jeffers

Luther Standing Bear

John Steinbeck

A. B. Guthrie Jr.

Jack Schaefer

Frank Waters

Jose Antonio Villarrea

William Stafford

N. Scott Momaday

Al Young

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

Edward Abbey

Wallace Stegner

Sam Shepard

Act 1: Scene 1

Act 2: Scene 5

Rudolfo Anaya

Gary Snyder

Gretel Ehrlich

Louis L'Amour

Denise Chavez

May Swenson

Charles Bowden

Amy Tan

Terry Tempest Williams

"Reimagining Warner," from Heart of the Land (1994)

Rick Bass

Barbara Kingsolver

Linda Hogan

Guide to Further Reading

Credits

Index
12.

Representing History in Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife, in MELUS
by Bella Adams. 22 pgs.

Journal Article
13.

Teaching American Ethnic Literatures: Nineteen Essays ("Swan-Feather Mothers and Coca-Cola Daughters: Teaching Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club" begins on p. 327)
by John R. Maitino, David R. Peck. 350 pgs.

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Contents

Introduction

Preface: Native American Literature

Indian Preservation: Teaching Black Elk Speaks

Beauty Before Me: Notes on House Made of Dawn (n. Scott Momaday)

Crying for Vision in James Welch's Winter in the Blood

Ceremony: from Alienation to Reciprocity (leslie Marmon Silko)

Building Bridges: Crossing the Waters to a Love Medicine (Louise Erdrich)

Preface: African American Literature

Ethnic and Gender Identity in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

Racial Discourse and Self-Creation: Richard Wright's Black Boy

"Measure Him Right": an Analysis of Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun

"Closer to the Edge": Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

A Fairy-Tale Life: The Making of Celie in Alice Walker's the Color Purple

Preface: Mexican American Literature

Learning to Read (and/In) Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima

Chicano Theatre Reaches the Professional Stage: Luis Valdez's Zoot Suit

Entering the House on Mango Street (sandra Cisneros)

Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and New Perspectives on Ethnic Autobiography

Preface: Asian American Literature

Searching for the Heart of "America" (carlos Bulosan)

"Growing with Stories":: Chinese American Identities, Textual Identities (maxine Hong Kingston)

Experiential Approaches to Teaching Joy Kogawa's Obasan

Reading Between the Syllables: Hisaye Yamamoto's Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories

Swan-Feather Mothers and Coca-Cola Daughters: Teaching Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club

Contributors
14.

Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook ("Amy Tan" begins on p. 365)
by Emmanuel S. Nelson. 424 pgs.

Book

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As a distinct area of literary study, Asian American literature now enjoys a level of critical recognition that was unimaginable when academic interest in the field began modestly some 25 years ago. Part of this recognition stems from the increasing contributions of Asian American novelists, whose works continue to capture growing levels of popular attention. This reference book provides alphabetically arranged entries for 70 Asian American novelists. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a short biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the novelist's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. In addition, the volume concludes with a selected, general bibliography.

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Contents

Preface

Meena Alexander: (1951- )

Bibliography

Himani Bannerji: (1942- )

Bibliography

Susham Bedi: (1945- )

Bibliography

William Peter Blatty: (1928- )

Bibliography

Vance Bourjaily: (1922- )

Bibliography

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard: (1947- )

Bibliography

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: (1951-1982)

Bibliography

Diana Chang: (1934- )

Bibliography

Evelina Chao: (1949- )

Bibliography

Frank Chin: (1940- )

Bibliography

Sook Nyul Choi: (1937- )

Bibliography

Susan Choi: (1969- )

Bibliography

Denise Chong: (1953- )

Bibliography

Louis Hing Chu: (1915-1970)

Bibliography

Richard Crasta (also Avatar Prabhu): (1952- )

Bibliography

Kiran Desai: (1972- )

Bibliography

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: (1956- )

Bibliography

Winnifred Eaton: (1875-1954)

Bibliography

Indira Ganesan: (1960- )

Bibliography

Stephen Gill: (1932- )

Bibliography

Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn: (1949- )

Bibliography

Chuang Hua: (?- )

Bibliography

Cynthia Kadohata: (1956- )

Bibliography

Younghill Kang: (1903-1972)

Bibliography

Richard E. Kim: (1937- )

Bibliography

Maxine Hong Kingston: (1940-)

Bibliography

Bharti Kirchner: (1940- )

Bibliography

Joy Kogawa: (1935- )

Bibliography

Alex Kuo: (1939- )

Bibliography

Helena Kuo: (1911- )

Bibliography

Chang-Rae Lee: (1965- )

Bibliography

C. Y. Lee: (1917- )

Bibliography

Gus Lee: (1946- )

Bibliography

Marie G. Lee: (1964- )

Bibliography

Sky Lee: (1952- )

Bibliography

Adet Lin (also Tan Yun): (1923-1971)

Bibliography

Steven C. Lo: (1949- )

Bibliography

Bette Bao Lord: (1938- )

Bibliography

Anchee Min: (1957- )

Bibliography

Rohinton Mistry: (1952- )

Bibliography

Kyoko Mori: (1957- )

Bibliography

Toshio Mori: (1910-1980)

Bibliography

Bharati Mukherjee: (1940- )

Bibliography

Milton Murayama: (1923- )

Bibliography

Kirin Narayan: (1959- )

Bibliography

Fae Myenne Ng: (1957- )

Bibliography

Mei Ng: (1967- )

Bibliography

Hualing Nieh: (1925- )

Bibliography

Sanjay Nigam: (1959- )

Bibliography

John Okada: (1923-1971)

Bibliography

Michael Ondaatje: (1943- )

Bibliography

Nahid Rachlin: (1947- )

Bibliography

Balachandra Rajan: (1920- )

Bibliography

Ninotchka Rosca: (1946- )

Bibliography

Patsy Sumie Saiki: (1915- )

Bibliography

Bienvenicio N. Santos: (1911-1996)

Bibliography

Lisa Lenine See: (1955- )

Bibliography

Shyam Selvadurai: (1965- )

Bibliography

Vikram Seth: (1952- )

Bibliography

S. Shankar: (1962- )

Bibliography

Bapsi Sidhwa: (1938- )

Bibliography

Mai-Mai Sze: (1905- )

Bibliography

Lin Tai-Yi (also Anor Lin or Lin Wu-Shuang): (1926- )

Bibliography

Amy Tan: (1952- )

Linda Ty-Casper: (1931- )

Bibliography

Holly Uyemoto: (1970- )

Bibliography

Jade Snow Wong: (1922- )

Bibliography

Shawn Wong: (1949- )

Bibliography

Lois-Ann Yamanaka: (1961- )

Bibliography

Karen Tei Yamashita: (1951- )

Bibliography

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Editor and Contributors
15.

Distinguished Asian Americans: A Biographical Dictionary ("Amy Tan" begins on p. 335)
by Hyung-chan Kim, Dorothy Cordova, Stephen S. Fugita, Franklin Ng, Jane Singh. 430 pgs.

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Asian Americans have made significant contributions to American society. This reference work celebrates the contributions of 166 distinguished Asian Americans. Most people profiled are not featured in any other biographical dictionary on noted Asian Americans. The Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Filipino Americans, Korean Americans, South Asian Americans (from India and Pakistan), and Southeast Asian Americans (from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) profiled in this work represent more than 75 fields of endeavor. From historical figures to figure skater Michelle Kwan, this work features both prominent and less familiar individuals who have made significant contributions in their fields. A number of the contemporary subjects have given exclusive interviews for this work.

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Title Page

Preface

Contents

Introduction

Kyutaro Abiko

John Fugue Aiso

Chang Apana

Thang Nguyen Barrett

Benjamin J. Cayetano

Boona Cheema

Nna Chen Chennault

Connie Chung

Victoria Manalo Draves

Bobby Enriquez

March Fong Eu

Soon Hyun

Lawson Fusao Inada

Maxine Hong Kingston

Michelle Kwan

Genevieve (Genny) Lim

John Keun Lim

Daniel S. C. Liu

Benjamin Menor

Patsy Takemoto Mink

Hiroshi H. Miyamura

Ronald Tai Young Moon

Toshio Mori

Josie Cruz Natori

Isamu Noguchi

Soon Tek Oh

Vincent H. Okamoto

James Matsumoto Omura

Safi U. Qureshy

Robert Santos

George Shima

Paull Hobom Shin

Sichan Siv

Stanley Sue

Amy Tan

Togo William Tanaka

Chang Lin Tien

Edison Uno

Charles B. Wang

Jade Snow Wong

Appendix A: Fields of Professional Activity

Appendix B: Ethnic Subgroups

Index

Editors
16.

Amy Tan Gets Her Voice Back, in Book
by Jane Ganahl. 5 pgs.

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