The Asian American movement was a movement in the 1960s and 70s where Asian Americans protested for the development of ethnic studies, the end of the Vietnam war, and reparations for Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps in World War II. Amy Tan is an Asian American writer. She has written several books which contributed to Asian American writings. Her writings, particularly The Joy Luck Club, became popular which spreaded Asian American literature across sections of society. Before the Asian American movement, there weren’t many Asian American literatures and it wasn’t very well known either.

In Tan’s writings, they show a comparison between the Chinese lifestyle and American lifestyle in Asian American lives. In her writing Mother Tongue, Tan talks about how she speaks in a “broken” English to her mother because her mother’s English isn’t very good, but when Tan talks to anyone else such as a coworker, she speaks fluently in English. For Asian Americans, it can be hard for some of them to live in two different kinds of lifestyles if they immigrated from an Asian country to the U.S. On the other hand, others feel that it is natural for them to live in two different lifestyles because they were raised that way. Tan’s writings exposes readers to Asian American literature and how the world is viewed through their eyes. She shows the life of an Asian American to readers and this could change the way the reader view Asian Americans.