amy tan
... Tan’s own heritage became a prime focus of her writings. She combines the stories from different women speakers, looks at them from different perspectives, and re-writes or gives her own opinion on them. Her writings focuses on many different issues, the primary being the hardships of living with two different cultures; Chinese and American. Tan’s novels incorporate events from different time periods and national geographies. She takes things that happened in one place and compares it to another, even thought they may not coincide with one each other. Tan bridges the gap between the Old and New worlds. She provokes the reflection on Chinese daughters with their mothers and discusses their differentiated views on certain matters. The dominant theme of Tan’s writings are of women achieving self-identity and empowerment. She is known for her portrayals of Chinese women who are either immigrants or American born. (Shuman, 1510) The issue of the psychology of feminine relationships are brought up and also the relationships between mothers and daughters, siblings and friends. Tan blends her own stories of Chinese American women with stories from other Chinese women about China. She depicts the horrors or war in China and the problems many of the families living there had with the ones that had immigrated to the United States. (Shuman, 1511) This is brought out by her use of vivid situations and empathetic characters. Tan’s writings include non-fiction, poetry, biographies, autobiographies, and history. She tells the history of others along with herself and her own experiences. Reconfiguration of Chinese myths and parables are significant in the writings of Tan. She tries to set straight the wrong thought...