Amy Tan, an accomplished Chinese-American author, is known for incorporating her Chinese heritage into her literary works. Amy Ruth Tan was born to John and Daisy Tan on February 19, 2952 ("Amy Tan Biography"). Although Amy Tan's parents were both born in China, she was born in America. Daisy Tan was born to a wealthy family in Shanghai, China. John Tan, on the other hand, was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister. Amy Tan's parents met in a dangerous decade of 1940s China, as battles were fought on all fronts. John Tan worked for the United States Intelligence Service during World War II, which made it quite easy for him to flee China for the United States once the war was over. Daisy Tan, however, was not so lucky; she had been imprisoned. He fled in 1949, just before the communists took power; left on the last boat to deport from Shanghai to the United States. Shortly after Daisy arrived in the United States, she and John Tan decided to marry. Amy Tan's parents had two other children besides her; they were John Jr. and Peter Tan. The Tan clan moved many times as Amy Tan grew up, eventually settling in Santa Clara, California (Chatfield-Taylor 190). Growing up in California, Tan continued to embrace American values. He had taken on American values ​​as his identity, completely ignoring much of his Chinese heritage. In fact, young Amy Tan answered her mother's Chinese questions in English (Miller 1162). Teenager Amy Tan lost both her father and 16-year-old brother to a brain tumor. Shortly thereafter, he learned that he had two half-sisters in China from his mother's first marriage ("Amy Tan Biography"). In 1987, Tan took a trip to China to meet those same... middle of paper... Despite the hardships Winnie went through when she was younger, she appears to be a strong woman in America. The novel suggests that perhaps this is because she learned from her past and had to recreate her ideas about women in America ("SparkNotes" Par 6). Yet another theme in The Kitchen God's Wife is the tension between destiny and self-determination. Ideas of luck, fate, and destiny are constantly tested against ideas of self-determination, free choice, and will. Winnie's life is full of choices, and these choices are what make her such a strong woman (“SparkNotes” Par 7). Winnie recreates her life in America, which sheds another sliver of light on the idea of ​​self-determination versus the idea of ​​destiny. She chose to recreate herself and had to make it happen; fate played no role in its becoming (“SparkNotes” Par 8).