Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California) is an American writer of Chinese descent whose works explore mother-daughter relationships as well as relationships between Chinese American women and their immigrant parents. In 1993, Tan’s adaptation of her most popular fiction work, “The Joy Luck Club”, became a commercially successful film.

Ms. Tan was born into a family that believed strongly in fate and is quoted as saying, “If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.” In The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, she explores her legacy, as well as American circumstances, and finds ways to honor the past while creating her own brand of destiny. She discovers answers in everyday actions and attitudes-from writing stories, decorating her house with charms, learning to ski, and living with squirrels, to dealing with three members of her family afflicted with brain disease.

Tan’s father, John Tan, was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who came to America to escape from the Chinese Civil War. Her mother Daisy (who inspired Tan’s novel The Kitchen God’s Wife) divorced her first husband (who was abusive) and lost custody of their three daughters and fled to America on the last boat before the Communist takeover in 1949. Her parents then met and married, and had three children, Amy and her two brothers.

Tan’s father and oldest brother both died of brain tumors within one year of each other; after which her mother Daisy moved the family to the Netherlands and then Switzerland, where Tan finished high school. By this time, Tan and her mother were constantly fighting. She was enrolled at Linfield College by her mother, but transferred to San Jose City College, in California, with her boyfriend, where she studied English and linguistics instead of her mother’s desired pre-med. As a result of this decision Tan and her mother did not speak to each other for six months.

Tan started a business writing firm with a partner. Just as her new career was starting to take off, her mother became very sick and Tan promised her that if she got better, they would travel back to China so Daisy could show her daughter what she had left behind almost forty years before. Daisy regained her health, so Tan and her mother left for China in 1987. Tan says it was a revelation for her. “It gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult relationship with her mother, and inspired her to complete the book of stories she had promised her agent.”

Tan’s mother watched her mother commit suicide and Tan believed that both her grandmother and her mother suffered from depression. Tan also suffered from this as a child because every time her mother became upset with her present life and surroundings they would move house. On the other hand the constant moving and changing of schools gave her an “excellent training as a budding writer” as it sharpened her skills as a writer.

As a child Tan claims to have been very rebellious. She credits her rebellious nature with starting her career as a writer, having first started out as a pre-med student in college and being told by her teachers that math and science were her best skills. Ignoring the advice, Tan decided to become an English major while in her first year of college, just days after her employer told her that writing was her “worst skill” and that she should work to become an account manager. Tan then took up non-fiction writing as a freelancer. Undeterred, Tan received a master’s degree in linguistics at San Jose State University and her first job was as a children’s speech-language pathologist.

The first book that Tan ever bought was The Catcher in the Rye, the owning of which was considered to be a badge of rebellion for students in her California school. Her first copy was confiscated from her when she was 14 years old to protect her from its supposed bad influence. This early experience with censorship left an impression on Tan, who notes: “I grew up to be such a stubborn person. I learned I had to think for myself.”

Tan received her Bachelor and Master degrees in both English and Linguistics at San Jose State University. In 1974 she married her boyfriend Lou DeMattei, now a practicing tax attorney. They later settled down in San Francisco, and Tan (who kept her last name) began studying for a Doctorate in Linguistics, first at the UC Santa Cruz.

Tan has written several other books, including The Kitchen God’s Wife, 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 most recent book, Saving Fish From Drowning, explores the tribulations experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition into the jungles of Burma. In addition, Tan has written two children’s books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Saqwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot on encouraging children to write.

Currently, she is the literary editor for West, Los Angeles Times’ Sunday magazine, and did an uncredited rewrite on The Replacement Killers at the request of Mira Sorvino.

Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter with Ron Bass for the film adaptation of The Joy Luck Club, and was the creative consultant for Sagwa, the Emmy-nominated television series for children. Her essays and stories are found in hundreds of anthologies and textbooks, and they are assigned as “required reading” in many high schools and universities and guest voiced an episode in The Simpsons. She also performed as narrator with the San Francisco Symphony and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra playing an original score for Sagwa by composer Nathan Wang, and has lectured internationally at universities, including Stanford, Oxford, Jagellonium, Beijing, and Georgetown University both in Washington, DC and Doha, Qatar.

Amidst the adversity, Amy Tan’s counsel could not be clearer. “If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.”

Compiled from Wikipedia and other internet sites.