Amy Tan: A Literary CompanionMcFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, 2004 M09 9 - 240 pages In the mid-1980s, Amy Tan was a successful but unhappy corporate speechwriter. By the end of the decade, she was perched firmly atop the best-seller lists with The Joy Luck Club, with more popular novels to follow. Tan's work--once pigeonholed as ethnic literature--resonates with universal themes that cross cultural and ideological boundaries, and prove wildly successful with readers of all stripes. Tender, sincere, complex, honest and uncompromising in its portrayal of Chinese culture and its affect on women, Amy Tan's work earned her both praise and excoriation from critics, adoration from fans, and a place as one of America's most notable modern writers. This reference work introduces and summarizes Amy Tan's life, her body of literature, and her characters. The main text is comprised of entries covering characters, dates, historical figures and events, allusions, motifs and themes from her works. The entries combine critical insights with generous citations from primary and secondary sources. Each entry concludes with a selected bibliography. There is also a chronology of Tan's family history and her life. Appendices provide an overlapping timeline of historical and fictional events in Tan's work; a glossary of foreign terms found in her writing; and a list of related writing and research topics. An extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index accompany the text. |
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... husband and pay her way to Amer- ica . Suyuan Woo makes a new home in California while searching China nearly a half century for her lost twins . LuLing Liu Young earns renown and a comfortable living for brushing on parchment the ...
... husband and air force flier . She begins to see him as two people , the real man and the manipulative poseur . To ... husband , grocery manager George Lew , was her pseudo - husband Zeng , who sold earthenware jars at the mission . The ...
... husband and father figures . With The Kitchen God's Wife ( 1991 ) , Tan creates a major villain . Wen Fu , the abusive husband and father , first appears in the New Year's stage role of dragon , a foretoken of his gradual decline toward ...
Contents
Acknowledgments | 1 |
Chronology of Tans Family History Life and Works | 7 |
Tans Genealogy | 31 |
Copyright | |
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