Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

Bella Adams (University of Sunderland)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1995

Places

United States, California (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

In many ways, The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) is a very different novel to those that preceded it, not least because it failed to achieve the critical acclaim and attention of Amy Tan's highly successful The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife. What also distinguishes Tan's third novel is its focus on a different intercultural relationship between two half sisters, the American-born Olivia Yee and the Chinese-born Kwan Li, along with its representation of a different history and a different reality: mid-nineteenth century China and the “World of Yin” (p. 3). These differences mark something of a departure from the matrilineal narrative, and with this departure comes a realistic and, at times, semi-…

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3039 words

Citation: Adams, Bella. "The Hundred Secret Senses". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 January 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=542, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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