Patricia P. Chu's Assimilating Asians: Gendered Strategies of Authorship in Asian America (New Americanists), (2000) explores the increasingly important role of Asian authors in America and the ways in which they employ traditionally Western techniques to tell their stories. Chu also examines the ways in which female authors differ from male authors.

Typical American, Gish Jen's 1991 novel, relates the story of three Chinese immigrants who make new lives for themselves in America. They soon find that their beliefs, values, and expectations change as they become immersed in their new culture.

Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976) is considered a precursor to Tan's fiction. It is an intense and bitter story of a Chinese-American girl growing up in California, caught between the world of Caucasian "ghosts" and her mother's "talk-stories" about China.

Amy Tan's The Joy...