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Amy Tan Quotes
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Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese American experience. Her novel The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a film in 1993 by director Wayne Wang.

Tan has written several other novels, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement. She also wrote a collection of non-fiction essays entitled The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. In addition to these, Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat , which was turned into an animated series that aired on PBS.

Though she has won several awards for her work, Tan has also received substantial criticism for her "complicity in perpetuating racial stereotypes and misrepresentations as well as gross inaccuracies in recalling details of the Chinese cultural heritage". This, along with her frequently negative depiction of Chinese culture in her work, has led several writers and scholars to accuse Tan of pandering to Western presumptions and prejudices about Chinese people.

✵ 19. February 1952   •   Other names Amy Tanová
Amy Tan photo
Amy Tan: 89   quotes 4   likes

Amy Tan Quotes

“I don't feel the need to be a role model, it's just something that's been thrust upon me. Teachers and a lot of Asian-American organizations, for example, say to me, "We need you to come and speak to us because you're a role model."… Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden. Someone who writes fiction is not necessarily writing a depiction of any generalized group, they're writing a very specific story.”

Amy Tan

SALON Interview (1995)

Feeling , Teachers

“Now that I'm angry at Harold, it's hard to remember what was so remarkable about him.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 9, pg. 155

“After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 3, pg. 63

Thinking , Personality

“I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 15, pg. 254

Children

“For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 4, pg. 81

Truth , Lie , Light , Passion

“External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself.”

Amy Tan

American Acheivement interview (1996)

People , World , Hope , Sense

“One relative felt that the story of my grandmother should not have been revealed. My grandmother was the woman (in The Kitchen God's Wife) who had been raped, forced to be a concubine, and finally killed herself. My mother, though, got equally angry at the relative and said, "For so many years, I carried this shame on my back, and my mother suffered, because she couldn't say anything to anybody." And she said, "It's not too late; tell the world, tell the world what happened to her."”

Amy Tan

And I take her mandate to be the one that is in my heart, the one that I should follow.
SALON Interview (1995)

God , World , Suffering , Heart

“It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 14, pg. 247

Hate , Joy

“On the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 13, pg. 240

Soul

“I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child…”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 10, pg. 183

Fight

“That was the night, in the kitchen, that I realized I was no better than who I was… And I no longer felt angry at Waverly. I felt tired and foolish, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind and discover there was no one there.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 12, pg. 207

Night

“You see what power is – holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.”

Amy Tan The Kitchen God's Wife

Source: The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), p. 387

Fear

“Look at this face. Do you see my foolish hope?”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 16, pg. 283

Hope

“I was writing for businesses. I think my mother was a little skeptical in the beginning, but fortunately, as a free-lance writer I was successful almost immediately. And so she was very proud, because she measured success in terms of money, which is what I started to do as well. My goal then, became to increase the amount of money that I made each month. Not simply each year, but each month — I mean, talk about pressure — to have more billable hours each month. So that by the end of my third year of being a free-lance writer, I was billing 90 hours a week. I had no time to sleep. I had no life. People said I was crazy, that I was a workaholic. And I couldn't understand how it was that I had these wonderful clients, and I was making all this money, and I wasn't happy and I didn't feel successful. That's when I started to write fiction.”

Amy Tan

American Acheivement interview (1996)

Life , Money , People , Feeling

“I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 8, pg. 134

Change

“Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 15, pg. 259

“Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 2, pg. 48

Pain

“I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club (1989), Ch. 8, pg. 154

Feeling