The author has instead described it as being emotionally accurate, with the themes and conflicts rooted in Tan’s real relationship with her mother-who wound up loving the book. This isn’t accurate, as the scenarios in the book aren’t based on Tan’s life. The Joy Luck Club is-and isn’t-autobiographical.īecause Tan has been so outspoken about her mother’s influence on The Joy Luck Club, many readers have come to assume it was autobiographical. The remaining 13 stories were written in just four months. Most of The Joy Luck Club was written in just four months.Īfter receiving positive feedback on three of the stories that would eventually be included in The Joy Luck Club, Tan decided to quit her job as a freelance business writer and devote all her time to completing the book. Tan still considers it a collection of short stories. ![]() ![]() But when one early review for the book referred to it as a novel, the publisher decided that was better from a marketing perspective and took “stories” off the title page. Tan said she was inspired by Love Medicine by Louise Erdich, which used a similar structure. Tan originally conceived The Joy Luck Club as a series of 16 vignettes about four pairs of mothers and daughters, effectively making it a short story collection. The Joy Luck Club wasn’t originally written as a novel. The experience pushed Tan to complete a book of short stories about Chinese mothers and their Chinese American daughters. That year, the then-35-year-old traveled with her mother Daisy to visit the three daughters Daisy had been forced to leave behind after fleeing the communist country in 1949. Tan, the daughter of immigrants, had never been to China prior to 1987. The Joy Luck Club was inspired in part by a trip to China. Becoming a novelist was the furthest thing from her mind, but Tan did have an interest in short fiction and attended a writer’s group led by Molly Giles, setting her on the path to becoming a full-time fiction writer. to travel Europe before Tan graduated from high school in Switzerland.Īfter stints at five different colleges, Tan emerged with degrees in English and linguistics and became a language development specialist before turning to freelance business writing. At 15, her father John and brother Peter both succumbed to brain tumors, prompting her mother to take Tan and her younger brother John Jr. Before the age of 18, Tan had lived in 12 homes around the San Francisco area. ![]() If lived experiences inform a writer’s best work, then Amy Tan has a deep reservoir to draw from. The Academy Presents "The Joy Luck Club" (1993) 25th Anniversary / Alberto E.
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