This is the most comprehensive study to date of Amy Tan’s work. It offers close readings of her texts in the context of broader debates about the representation of identity, history and reality. In contrast with Tan’s own American-born narrators, and mainstream critics, Bella Adams’s study looks beyond the stereotypes which appear in Tan’s books, and explores the ways in which Chinese immigrants and their American relatives struggle to understand each others ‘best qualities’ via the Chinese tradition of the ‘talk story’. She emphasises Tan’s American narrators’ process of becoming Chinese and discovering ‘real China’, and the significance of the ironic staging of these moments. Students will find this study both accessible and probing, and scholars will welcome its contribution to our understanding of a significant figure in contemporary literature.