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Amy Tan was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California.

She is a Chinese-American writer and novelist.

She was born to immigrant parents from China.

She attended the University of California of Berkeley, Linfield College, San Jose State University, University of California of Santa Cruz, and San Jose City College.

At those universities, she received her B.A. in English and Linguistics, along with an M.A. in Linguistics.

She worked as a freelance writer and a language development consultant after college.

In 1989, she published the ‘The Joy Luck Club’.

The book ‘The Joy Luck Club’ was a New York Times Best-Seller for over forty weeks. It was also adapted into a film.

She has written two children’s books, ‘The Moon Lady’ and ‘Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat’.

She is married to Lou DeMattei.

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Advance praise:

"A profound work of endless fascination, discovery, and compassion."-Booklist (starred review)

To read more, click HERE

"Wise and profound." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

To read more, click HERE
A description from the publisher:
In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement 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. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels.

Tan explores shocking truths uncovered by family memorabilia--the real reason behind an IQ test she took at age six, why her parents lied about their education, mysteries surrounding her maternal grandmother--and, for the first time publicly, writes about her complex relationship with her father, who died when she was fifteen. Supplied with candor and characteristic humor, Where the Past Begins takes readers into the idiosyncratic workings of her writer's mind, a journey that explores memory, imagination, and truth, with fiction serving as both her divining rod and link to meaning. ​

AMY TAN is the author of The Valley of Amazement, The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Opposite of Fate, Saving Fish from Drowning, and two children's books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat. Tan was also a co-producer and co-screenwriter of the film version of The Joy Luck Club and the librettist for the opera The Bonesetter's Daughter.

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Advance praise: "A profound work of endless fascination, discovery, and compassion."-Booklist (starred review) To read more, click HERE "Wise and profound." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) To read more, click HERE A description from the publisher: In Where the Past Begins , bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction.

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Chinese Immigration
1849 - 1882

Immigrants arrived from China seeking for jobs in attempts to escape China's economic issues.

Chinese-Americans Built the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s.

1882 - 1965

Immigrants arrived from China seeking for economic opportunities, specifically to get a chance at the California Gold Rush.

The first Chinatowns started appearing in U.S. cities in the early 1900s.

1965 - Present

During the late 20th century and early 21st century, there was a large influx of workers emigrating from China.

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Video:
Extended Interview: Chinese Immigration

Charlotte Brooks tells Gwen about life as a Chinese immigrant.
More from Elyse on Chinese immigration.
Today, Chinese Americans make up the largest Asian population in the U.S., totaling 2.5 million.

Chinese immigrants first flocked to the United States in the 1850s, eager to escape the economic chaos in China and to try their luck at the California gold rush.

When the Gold Rush ended, Chinese Americans were considered cheap labor.

They easily found employment as farmhands, gardeners, domestics, laundry workers, and most famously, railroad workers.

In the 1860s, it was the Chinese Americans who built the Transcontinental Railroad.

By the 1870s, there was widespread economic depression in America and jobs became scarce.

Hostility had been growing toward the Chinese American workers.

By 1882, things got so bad that Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, virtually banning all Chinese immigration into the United States.

It was only in 1943, when China became America's ally in World War II, that congress finally repealed the Exclusion Act.

Even then, Chinese immigration was still limited to a mere 105 people a year.

In 1965, all restrictions were lifted and the Chinese started to arrive in America in huge numbers.

The first Chinatowns started appearing in U.S. cities as far back as 1900.

Today, the largest Chinatown is in New York City, where almost 100,000 Chinese Americans live and work.

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Chinese Immigration | History Detectives | PBS

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Video: Extended Interview: Chinese Immigration Charlotte Brooks tells Gwen about life as a Chinese immigrant. More from Elyse on Chinese immigration. Today, Chinese Americans make up the largest Asian population in the U.S., totaling 2.5 million.

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In Amy Tan’s ‘Mother Tongue’, she expresses the difficulties of growing up with linguistic differences between a parent and a child. It also emphasizes the relationship between an immigrant parent and their first-generation American child. Tan shares her experiences of her childhood and what it was like growing up with a parent that spoke limited English. In many of her experiences, the judgment of others was a prominent factor, specifically judging how her mother’s ability to speak English. This was because others found it difficult to understand her when she spoke, which caused Tan to feel ashamed of her mother during her childhood. The perceptions of others onto her mother affected her own perception of her mother.

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I grew up in an Asian-American household with parents who did not speak English well. In the essay, Tan mentions the “language of intimacy”, which is English, but with an adaption to the way your family speaks. I related greatly to tan. English is not my first language but through the years, my ability to speak my first language has slowly deteriorated. Having a conversation with my parents consists of speaking a mixture of English and our native language. In the essay, Tan avoided using terms like “broken". I believe that she did this because it showed a perception of her mother and her capabilities that were not true to how she thought of her mother. Growing up, I was never ashamed of it, but I always found it difficult explaining certain things and not knowing the right words to use.

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February 2016 | Volume 73 | Number 5
Helping ELLs Excel Pages 7-7

Marge Scherer

Amy Tan still winces when she describes her mother's English as "broken." Although her mother's speech embarrassed her while growing up, even back then she realized it was rich with imagery and understanding, as those who've read The Joy Luck Club can appreciate.

In her essay, "Mother Tongue," Tan tells a story about a time when her mother, angry with a stockbroker who had disrespected her, made Amy, her teenage daughter, get on the phone and pretend to be she. It wasn't the first or last time her mother had made this request because a lot of people-from doctors to bus drivers-did not take her seriously. This time, however, her mother's message (shortened here)-"Why he don't send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money"-became in Tan's words something like: "I'm getting rather concerned. You had agreed to send the check. If I don't receive it immediately, I am going to speak to your manager next week." The fledgling writer's polished English had a desirable effect, but what really won the day was that her mother made good on the threat. She appeared in the stockbroker's office the next week to chew out him and his boss in "impeccable broken English."

Ironically, Tan, at 15, had her own language troubles at school. Her teachers counseled her that English, and especially writing, were not her strong suits and that she should pursue either math or science. She scored below the 70th percentile on language achievement tests, primarily, she believes, because the word analogies on the tests played on her imagination so much that she was baffled about choosing one meaning from the multiple choices.

That those who speak in less than perfect, or even fractured, English are underestimated is only one of the themes in Tan's story. Another is the continuing challenge of learning multiple languages and navigating multiple cultures. This issue of Educational Leadership echoes those ideas and also stresses the need for deep and rigorous learning for the fastest growing subgroup of students in our schools today: English language learners.

Researchers Ilana M. Umansky, Rachel A. Valentino, and Sean F. Reardon lead off by describing their 12-year longitudinal study of four English language programs in a large urban California school district. Their findings about programs are nuanced: All of the programs worked, but in some of the two-language programs, students took longer to gain proficiency. After they did reach proficiency, however, these students often made larger academic gains in the upper grades than did the other groups. The researchers conclude that schools should invest in high-quality two-language programs, opting for slow and steady growth over quick wins. They also recommend that schools consider community and stakeholder voice. What meets the needs of one district may not be valued by another. A major finding is that ELL programs must always focus not only on helping students attain language benchmarks but also on providing full, meaningful content.

Our authors explore many avenues to providing that instruction. Jane Hill, for example, shows how best to teach students in the early stages of language acquisition without watering down the curriculum. Wayne E. Wright tackles how to increase oral language proficiency, cautioning that exposing students to social English will not take the place of rich discussion. Carol Booth Olson and colleagues describe how to prepare students to meet the writing demands of college and careers. Other authors discuss how to meet the social and affective needs of students-from getting to know students' families, to encouraging social mingling, to helping students find their own voice (pp. 46, 51, 78, online). And Patricia Gándara and Lucrecia Santibañez examine the teacher quality gap and the characteristics of "the teachers our English learners need."

Throughout the issue, there is an urgent call to meet the challenge of helping English language learners excel. Statistics show that ELLs are almost twice as likely as their native-English-speaking classmates to drop out of school. As the world changes and many more of us become aware of the necessity and benefit of speaking several languages, wasting the potential of ELLs will be beyond embarrassing.

Endnote

Tan, A. "Mother tongue." Available at http://www.olypen.com/pnkdurr/as/mother_text.html

KEYWORDS

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Broken English and Other Embarrassments - Educational Leadership

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February 2016 | Volume 73 | Number 5 Helping ELLs Excel Pages 7-7 Marge Scherer Amy Tan still winces when she describes her mother's English as "broken." Although her mother's speech embarrassed her while growing up, even back then she realized it was rich with imagery and understanding, as those who've read The Joy Luck Club can appreciate.

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http://www.amytan.net/

https://www.biography.com/writer/amy-tan

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb16/vol73/num05/Broken-English-and-Other-Embarrassments.aspx

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/chinese-immigration

https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/chinese-immigration/