Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

“Reading for me was a refuge. I could escape from everything that was miserable in my life and I could be anyone I wanted to be in a story, through a character.” Said by Amy Tan, one of the best-known Chinese-American authors who was prominent in contemporary American literature field. Her first book, The Joy Luck Club, introduced the cultural value of China and America which was highly successful. It remained nine months on the Times Bestseller and was translated into more than seventeen languages. People wonder how Amy Tan was inspired to write about the interactions between Chinese and American culture, and her personal context including family, academic achievements and Chinese-American culture explained the influences.

Amy Tan’s family

Since Amy Tan hoped to become a storyteller that can deliver the rich experience in Chinese traditions, Amy started to follow her own desire rather than her mother’s expectations. She followed her boyfriend and went to the San Jose City College to study English ad linguistics. This provided the academic strengths and allowed her to start a career as a business writer in 1981. Even though she was successful in the field of business, she was dissatisfied because she was more interested in linguistics in terms of writing stories. Then she started to attend the fiction workshop at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. This experience helped her to gain supports from the field and she was able to continue her dream even with the conflicts between her mother. Afterwards, she published a short story in 1986, and her first book in

In contemporary America, globalization and multi-culturalism was on going which allowed many of the Chinese immigrants travel to America. The Chinese American culture developed rapidly in America and that it emerged the cross cultural communication. There were mainly two types of Chinese-Americans, one group tried to conserve the Chinese tradition, and the other group wanted to be Americanized. Amy Tan, was one of the second group, and this helped her to write cultural values including American culture in her book. However, Amy Tan did not get rid of the Chinese culture, because she was mentally and physically attached to Chinese-American culture. In addition, the Chinese- American put a great emphasis on the education, which they supported their children to be noble, intelligent and successful. For example, June in The Joy Luck Club learning the piano patently illustrated the expectations and importance of education.

Amy Tan became the most influential Chinese-American because “I think I 've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.” She was strongly impacted by her families, academic fields and the Chinese-American culture. Within those factors, she was able to learn to be prepared for conflicts