Bay Area literary icon Amy Tan has an archive so large it fills over 60 boxes. It’s a collection that’s been growing for decades. Among the treasures are Tan’s personal journals, her correspondence with other writers, family photographs and book manuscripts, including that of her career-altering novel, The Joy Luck Club. Now, slightly reluctantly, Tan is allowing her archive to be housed at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.
“They are mementoes of my life: what I thought, what I loved, who I loved, what I believed, what I lost — all the moments that led to who I am, which is always evolving,” Tan stated in Wednesday’s announcement.
Letting the Bancroft Library acquire her archive was a decision Tan didn’t make lightly. As if personal journals and family photographs weren’t intimate enough, the collection also contains unpublished works, some of which date back to her childhood. But as a former UC Berkeley student, what ultimately changed Tan’s mind was her trust in the library staff and seeing how much they cared for her materials.
“This collection will prove a rich and rewarding one for students and scholars,” said Bancroft Library Director Kate Donovan in the announcement. “And it also highlights one of the great strengths of Bancroft’s collections — the deep diversity and community of writers in California and the American West.”
In addition to being a literary goldmine, the archive offers a glimpse into Chinese American life in the Bay Area in the 1940s and ’50s. Included are pocket diaries written largely in Chinese by her father, John Tan, and materials that document her parents’ immigration story and their early years living in Berkeley and Oakland.
For anyone hoping to see part of the collection right away, the Bancroft Library currently has some of the original art pieces from Tan’s latest book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles on view through June. The rest of the collection, Donovan says, still needs to be processed and catalogued by archivists before being made available to the public. It’s estimated the process will take about two years.
Once the cataloging process is complete, Tan’s archive will be available in the Bancroft Library’s Reading Room. It will join a vast collection of literary works by other prominent Bay Area writers, including Joan Didion, Yoshiko Uchida and Thom Gunn.
“Amy Tan is a giant of the American literary canon with deep connections to the Bay Area,” said University Librarian Suzanne Wones. “This extraordinary collection of materials documenting her artistic work and personal life will now forever remain close to home.”