Author Amy Tan was born today in 1952
Event Description
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author best known for her examinations of relationships between mothers and daughters such as her 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club.
Classroom Activity
Project for students an excerpt of an interview with Amy Tan (Q8: Chinese Characters, 1:09:45 to 1:11:00). Discuss their impressions of her stance toward writing from her personal experience as an extension of her identity. Then invite students to tell a story of their own, either a fictionalized account of a memory or family experience or a more straightforward true story that is important to them and who they are.
Share the Story Map or the Story Cube interactives to help students generate and organize their ideas. Then give students the opportunity to share their stories by holding a classroom reading or creating an online or print collection.
Websites
Tan's eclectic website offers biographical information, photos, and multimedia.
In this TED Talk, Tan explores her creative process and the relationships between chance, ambiguity, and her fiction.
In this piece from The Atlantic, Tan reflects on an excerpt from Whitman's "Song of Myself" and relates it to her processes as a writer.