International best-selling author Amy Tan will speak at Scripps College on Thursday, November 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Garrison Theater, Scripps College Performing Arts Center. A book signing will follow the event. The lecture, sponsored by the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series “Voice and Vision,” is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the Malott Commons office at (909) 607-9372.
Amy Tan’s novels include the award-winning The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001), and Saving Fish from Drowning, (2005). Tan’s The Joy Luck Club was a finalist for the 1989 National Book Award in fiction and holds the distinction as the longest running title on The New York Times hardcoverbestseller list. The Joy Luck Club was also a featured book in The Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts to promote reading in the United States. In addition to her novels, she has published two children’s books, The Moon Lady (1992)and Sagwa: The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was developed into a children’s program on PBS.
The San Francisco Chronicle calls her, “thoroughly modern, but with a toe—perhaps an entire elegant foot—in the past.”
Born in Oakland to Chinese immigrant parents, Tan received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Jose State University and began her Ph.D in linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. Before she finished her doctoral dissertation, she left the program after the tragic murder of a close friend. Tan then worked in business consulting and business writing before publishing her first short story in a magazine in 1986. This short story, “End’s Game,” was later expanded to become The Joy Luck Club.
In 2004, Tan in collaboration with the Lyme Disease Association created the fund LymeAid 4 Kids. The fund provides financial support for the medical evaluation of children who are suspected of having Lyme disease. Along with Stephen King and Dave Berry, Tan is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band that makes appearances to support literacy programs for children. She resides in San Francisco and New York with her husband, Lou DeMattei.