Where to Start with Amy Tan
Amy Tan, known for her moving stories of Chinese American mothers and daughters, has written six novels, several works of nonfiction, two children's books, and two memoirs in her more than thirty-year career. Her first and best-known novel, The Joy Luck Club was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Orange Prize and spent over forty weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. If you haven't read any Amy Tan, her work is a treasure trove of beautiful stories about immigration, intergenerational division, and the Chinese-American experience. Check out our list of recommended novels to start with.
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Tan's debut novel is also her most famous, causing a huge splash upon its release and eventually spawning a Hollywood adaptation. The Joy Luck Club of the title consists of four Chinese women and their four daughters, born in America, and the novel takes the form of a series of vignettes spanning generations: from the mothers' journeys from China to America to the current crises their daughters face in adulthood. Notable for its rich characters and moving depictions of mother-daughter relationships, The Joy Luck Club is an absolute Amy Tan must-read.
The Valley of Amazement (2013)
Amy Tan's most recent book, The Valley of Amazement, is epic tale encompassing decades from turn-of-the-century San Francisco to the fall of the Qing dynasty in Shanghai, as a mother and daughter are separated, an ocean between them. As the two women seek to find each other and themselves, Tan explores her characteristic themes of motherhood, identity, and the clash of Chinese and American cultures in this unsparing, sweeping tale.
The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)
The Kitchen God's Wife focuses on the unspoken tensions and emotional walls between Chinese-American Pearl Brandt and her immigrant mother, Winnie, as the two try to connect at a family reunion in San Francisco. In this ambitious novel, which reviewers compared to War and Peace and Gone With The Wind, Winnie opens up to her daughter about her life before coming to America, and her struggles with abandonment, neglect, and her abusive marriage.
The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)
This novel, Tan's third, shifts away from her bread-and-butter mother-daughter relationships to focus on two sisters instead: Libby, an American-born photographer, is constantly irked by her half-sister Kwan, who immigrated from China years prior and claims to be able to converse with ghosts. When the pair visit Kwan's hometown, Changmian, Libby begins to notice strange connections between the present and the tales of the past that Kwan seems to have pulled from the land of the dead.
The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001)
Struggling to regain her voice and express her true feelings to her husband, ghostwriter Ruth Young discovers that her inability to speak closely parallels the story of her mother LuLing's early life in China, where Ruth finds the famous bonesetter, a woman whose mouth was sealed shut during a suicide attempt.
Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir (2017)
In Where the Past Begins Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer.