...A mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad for you. A mother helps her baby flex her first feelings of pleasure. She teaches her when to later exercise restraint, or to take squealing joy in recognizing the fluttering leaves of the gingko tree, to sense a quieter but more profound satisfaction in chancing upon an everlasting pine. A mother enables you to realize that there are different levels of beauty and therein lie the sources of pleasure, some of which are popular and ordinary, and thus of brief value, and others of which are difficult and rare, and hence worth pursuing.

Tan is also in a band with several other well-known writers the Rock Bottom Remainders. When Tan was 15 years old her older brother Peter and father both died of brain tumors within a year of each other. She is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants Daisy (née Li) who was forced to leave her three daughters from a previous marriage behind in Shanghai and John Tan an electrical engineer and Baptist minister.

In addition to these Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994) which was turned into an animated series which aired on PBS. Tan is also in a band with several other well-known writers the Rock Bottom Remainders. Her most recent novel Saving Fish from Drowning explores the tribulations experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an expedition in the jungles of Burma.