Summarize amy tan background . Background Although her mother wanted her to be a neurosurgeon and a concert pianist, Amy Tan found her own road to success by becoming a writer. Her first novel. The Joy Luck Club, is a collection of related stories told by four mothers and four daughters and was later turned into a film, Tan was born in Oakland, California, two and a half years after her parents fled China's Communist revolution and settled in the United States. As the daughter of immigrant parents, Tan says she grew up with two Englishes... American English and Chinese English.