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    A Study Guide for Amy Tan's "The Hundred Secret Senses"
    A Study Guide for Amy Tan's "The Hundred Secret Senses"
    A Study Guide for Amy Tan's "The Hundred Secret Senses"
    Ebook46 pages32 minutes

    A Study Guide for Amy Tan's "The Hundred Secret Senses"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Amy Tan's "The Hundred Secret Senses," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535837491
    A Study Guide for Amy Tan's "The Hundred Secret Senses"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Amy Tan's "The Hundred Secret Senses" - Gale

      13

      The Hundred Secret Senses

      Amy Tan

      1995

      Introduction

      In an interview with the Academy of Achievement, Amy Tan tells that, when she was growing up, There was a lot of storytelling going on in our house: family stories, gossip, what happened to the people left behind in China. These stories were clearly significant to Tan because she includes autobiographical elements in many of her books, including The Hundred Secret Senses (1995). Just as Olivia in the novel learns that her father left behind a daughter when he came to America to find a better life, Tan herself learned that she had half-sisters in China. As an adult, Tan traveled to China with her mother after she recovered from a serious illness, much as Olivia and Kwan return to China: both Tan's and Olivia's journeys brought better understanding of cultural heritage, the importance of family, and self. Drawing from her personal experience allows Tan to breathe life into her characters, filling them with emotion.

      The Hundred Secret Senses includes sexual situations, some descriptions of war-time violence, and casual references to recreational drug use. It is therefore more appropriate for older students.

      Author Biography

      Tan was born on February 19, 1952, in Oakland, California. Her mother, a nurse, and her father, an electrical engineer and Baptist minister, immigrated separately from China. My parents had very high expectations, Tan said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten. They also hoped that she might become a surgeon or a concert pianist, but Tan knew she wanted to be a writer from the time she was eight years old, when she won an essay contest in a local newspaper.

      When Tan was fourteen, both her brother and her father died of brain tumors, and Tan and her mother moved to Switzerland. There Tan attended an expensive private school and developed a rebellious streak. This teenage rebellion was the beginning of a difficult relationship between mother and daughter.

      Tan finished high school in 1969, and the family moved back to the United States. Her mother pressured her into enrolling at a Baptist college. Tan went on a blind date with Louis DeMattei, the man who would become her husband, and dropped out of school to follow him to San Jose. Tan graduated from San Jose State University with honors, majoring in English and linguistics. She continued at San Jose State, earning a master's degree in linguistics. She then enrolled as a doctoral student at Berkeley but did not complete her degree. After leaving school, Tan used her background in linguistics, working

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