Exploring Amy Tan: The Intersection of Cultures

“At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs.”, said Amy Tan, an American writer of Chinese origin. She is a writer exposed to and grew up in American culture but was also influenced by her traditional Chinese culture. Amy is most famous for the novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’, which was a great success when it was first published. The three influential factors are the culture she lives in, her childhood and her career life.

Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California in 1952. As the second migrant generation in America, but her mother was strongly influenced by the Chinese traditional culture. Therefore she inherited the educational way of Chinese parents. In other words, she had a high expectation on her daughter and maintained discipline more strictly than the American parents. That means she was always under pressure from her mother. Amy Tan was expected by her mother to be a doctor or a pianist in the future. As time passed, she found out that she

Later she decided to help the children with disabilities. A few years later, Amy Tan became a freelance writer in 1981. She also worked for several companies for writing stuff. All these experiences accumulated as precious knowledge for her later writing. Four years later,she started writing the novel in leisure time. Another 4 years later, her first novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’ was published and was so popular in that period. Undoubtedly, this is a great success. From the perspective of a young writer without too much experience, it was tough for her to made that achievement. So that is quite impressive. And this novel also won three awards, and these are Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Commonwealth Gold Award, and Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. To some degrees, all these awards also reflect her literary