Amy Tan

Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something...

Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her.

From New York Times bestselling author Amy Tan, a memoir about finding meaning in life through acts of creativity and imagination. As seen on PBS American Masters "Unintended Memoir."

In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan reveals the ways that our memories and personal experiences can inform our creative work. Drawing on her vivid impressions of her upbringing,

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"THE WISEST AND MOST CAPTIVATING NOVEL TAN HAS WRITTEN" -The Boston Sunday Globe

"TRULY MAGICAL...UNFORGETTABLE...The first person narrator is Olivia Laguni, and her unrelenting nemesis from childhood on is her half-sister, Kwan Li... It is Kwan's haunting predictions, her implementation of the secret senses, and her linking of the present with the past that cause this novel to shimmer with meaning and to leave it in the reader's mind

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"...he took his hands off the controls in a paroxysm of joy and shouted, 'Strap on your safety belt, Mrs. Gadshill! We're going to make a loop-the-loop!'"

—From Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor by John Cheever

A compilation of classic tales by great American writers performed by terrific actors, with a lineup including Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and PEN Award winners.

Amy Tan's

Rules

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"Vic Brown did not want to go to camp this summer. It's nice being back with her friends in the woods of New Hampshire, but Vic still can't forget about the secret reason her mom wanted her and her brother out of the house--or how much her family is going to change. When her homelife is blowing up, it can be hard to focus on campfires and canoeing. But there is something about summer and surprises that goes together like blueberry pancakes and maple...

A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared, ' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil...

Born to Chinese immigrant parents into 1950's America, it would be decades before Ms. Tan would come to fully understand how her mother's self-destructive tendencies were rooted in watching her own mother kill herself after being forced into the former marital system of concubinage. This painful family legacy inspired her stories of women without the power to choose their lives. An interweaving of archival imagery, artful animation and live performance...