"As a child Amy Tan believed her life was duller than most. She read to escape." -http://www.amytanauthor.com/THE_OFFICIAL_WEBSITE_of_AMY_TAN/About_Me.html
 | Not so dull after all ~
Amy was born February 19th, 1952 in Oakland, California, just after her parents immigrated to the United States from China. She grew up moving many times until, when she was fifteen, her father and her older brother died in short succession, both from brain tumors. It was then, that Daisy Tan, Amy's mother, moved what remained of her family to Europe in an attempt to flee a curse she felt was on the family. The Tan Family settled in Switzerland and it was there that Amy found comfort in a counter-culture boyfriend. She shares on her website that the decision to go down that path caused her to become a, "--unemployed and psychiatrically suicidal, who hung with hippies.". And it led to her, as a sixteen year old, being arrested for drugs. But Amy did not give up on her life and managed to only a few years later win a scholarship that sent her to Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon where she met her current husband on a blind date. Together they moved to California she earned her M.A. in linguistics from San Jose State University. After several years of work as a freelance business writer she became frustrated by the dry nature of this kind of work; it was a promising, lucrative career but it left her feeling dissatisfied. She began devoting more time and energy to creative pursuits such as Jazz piano and fiction writing. Her love for the craft of writing eventually led her to write "The Joy Luck Club" which earned positive reviews as it spent eight months atop the New York Times Bestseller list. It was subsequently made into a play as well as a successful movie. Her autobiography, The opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, describes her life as well as her experience as a sufferer of lyme disease. She experienced intense symptoms like mental impairment, physical pain, even seizures before she was diagnosed; such problems made it impossible for her to continue her career as a writer. With the help of medication she’s been able to return to writing but since the disease had advanced her overall health has been affected. |
Amy Tan: Writer, Artist, Multi-modal Force of Being Recently Amy Tan has transmediated one of her works, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, into an opera. Her contribution formed the textual foundation for the whole production. Here’s an interview about the process on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94578101  |  Rock Bottom Remainders: Writers Turned Musicians Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Stephen King and Mitch Albom are among some of the writers who formed the Rock Bottom Remainders, a group which has “published more than 150 titles, sold more than 150 million books, and been translated into more than 25 languages” according to their website. Pictures of Amy the Lead Dominatrix |
Amy Tan on TED.com (959,511 views and counting)
QUOTES from the TED page:
“There are never complete answers. Or rather, if there is an answer, it is to remind myself that there is uncertainty in everything.”
“We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.”
“How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths.”
