Amy Tan (born 1952) is known for her lyrically written tales of emotional conflict between Chinese-American mothers and daughters separated by generational and cultural differences. Together with her distinctive writing style and rich imagery, Tan's treatment of such themes as loss and reconciliation, hope and failure, friendship and familial conflict, and the healing power of storytelling have brought her popular success and critical attention.

Tan was born in Oakland, California. Her father was a Chinese-born Baptist minister; her mother was the daughter of an upper-class family in Shanghai. While still in her teens, Tan experienced the loss of both her father and her sixteen-year-old brother to brain tumors and learned that two sisters from her mother's first marriage in China were still alive (one of several autobiographical elements she would later incorporate into her fiction). Tan majored in English at San Jose State in the early 1970s rather than...