She first began writing fiction as a form of therapy. Considered a workaholic by her friends, Tan had been working ninety hours a week as a freelance technical writer. She became dissatisfied with her work life, however, and hoped to eradicate her workaholic tendencies through psychological counseling. However, when her therapist fell asleep several times during her counseling sessions, Tan quit and decided to curb her working hours by delving into jazz piano lessons and writing fiction instead. Tan's first literary efforts were short stories, one of which secured her a position in the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, a fiction writers' workshop. Tan's hobby soon developed into a new career when her first novel,
The Joy Luck Club, was published.
The Joy Luck Club
Set in the late 1980s, The Joy Luck Club details the generational and cultural differences between a young woman, June, and her late Chinese mother's three Chinese friends. June's mother and the three now-elderly women had formed the Joy Luck Club, a social group, in San Francisco in 1949. Nearly forty years later, June's mother has died.
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