(born 1924) Chinese American novelist and child of immigrants, whose stories are interwoven into her fiction. Tan has focused on relations of new and old mediated through complex and painful relations of mother and daughter. Her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989), won the National Book Award and became a breakthrough movie depiction of Asian American women beyond Hollywood stereotypes (1994). Later works include The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) and The Hundred Secret Senses (1996); she has also produced children’s books and become involved in a literary band.