Amy Tan (19th February 1952) is an American writer with Chinese heritage whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese American experience. Tan has written several novels and is best known for works such as The Joy Luck Club (also a major movie), and The Kitchen God’s Wife.
Born in Oakland, California to Chinese immigrants, John and Daisy Tan who escaped to America in order to get away from the Chinese Civil War. After school, Tan would receive a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English and linguistics before writing her first novel The Joy Luck Club (US – UK).
Today we’re celebrating the author with some of our favourite quotes.
If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.
I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward
I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I placed them.
Isn’t hate merely the result of wounded love?
That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets
Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
Whenever I’m with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
You see what power is – holding someone else’s fear in your hand and showing it to them.
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