Major Issues
Author Links
Essay Questions

Major Issues

Amy Tan lost and reclaimed family stories and histories, especially women’s stories, are major structural and thematic components of Amy Tan’s fiction. Readers and reviewers praise Tan’s accessible prose and her creation of sympathetic, engaging women narrators—as many as seven in her most famous work, The Joy Luck Club. Family relationships, especially mother-daughter bonds, are a predominant focus in Tan’s writing. Critics also point to her examination of inter-generational conflict in immigrant families. The interplay between ethnicity and identity has also been noted as a major Tan theme. Feminist scholars have examined Tan’s portrayal of strong female characters that endure and overcome suffering and oppression. Tan’s incorporation of history and feminist revision of folk tales and mythology have also been analyzed.

Author Links

Anniina’s Amy Tan
Page This well-organized site presents a brief biography of Tan, plus links to interviews, reviews, and other material.

Voices from the Gaps
This bio-critical introduction notes the themes of immigration and cultural assimilation in Tan’s works and comments on her significant contribution to the Asian-American literary "boom," plus links to other sites.

The Joy Luck Club Homepage
Here you’ll find excerpts from reviews, structural analysis, and other sites related to the collection in which "A Pair of Tickets" was published.

Featured Author: Amy Tan
Reviews of Tan’s books, and articles about Tan from The New York Times archives.

The Spirit Within
"Salon" interview in which Tan talks about literary-ethnic categorization, ghosts, depression, and other topics.