American author of novels about Chinese-American women that contrast the hardships the immigrant women experienced in China with the very different lives of their American daughters. She is best known for her two semiautobiographical novels,
The Joy Luck Club(1989;film, 1993) and
The Kitchen God's Wife(1991). Tan also wrote two children's stories,
The Moon Lady(1992) and
The Chinese Siamese Cat(1994). -
Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literaturemore