AMY TAN

Kramer (Alice Walker, 1995) describes in a clear narrative Tan's complex personal history, her intricate Chinese-American family story, and above all, her tangled relationship with her mother as the wellsprings for her fiction. She also ties Tan's development as a writer together with her growth and maturity as a person. She includes tales of Tan's rebellious years and early discomfiture with her Chinese heritage that will surely reassure and comfort readers, and will send them to The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife for Tan's own powerful writing. Besides its obvious utility for school reports, this biography in the People to Know series will inspire young people who might be struggling with their own ethnicity and with their own desire to put that struggle into words. (b&w photos, chronology, notes, further reading, index) (Biography. 11+)