Serving young learners with special needs

TAN WITH National Book Store’s Miguel Ramos and his mom, Swatch Philippines president Virgie S. Ramos

Amy Tan gave up her doctoral program in linguistics after the murder of a good friend and roommate of hers and her husband Lou DeMattei. The friend had wanted to go into the field of disability, in particular to make computerized equipment for people with special needs. He was murdered when he moved into a new apartment. It was such a tragic event that it made Tan think about what she had wanted to do with her life as compared to what their friend had wanted to do with his.

“My life was to someday get a job and sit in an ivory tower,” said Tan. “His life was to help people.” She decided to quit her job and go into their friend’s field. She applied to be a language development specialist for children with developmental disabilities. She was told she was extremely unqualified for the job.

“I heard a voice inside me saying, ‘Just tell her why you want this job,’ so I did,” said Tan, who finally did get the position.

“I ended up being in that field for the next five years,” said Tan, who subsequently designed a government-funded program for multicultural children with disabilities to be mainstreamed into the US public school system.

Mentoring young writers

Amy Tan has volunteered at 826 Valencia, a nonprofit in San Francisco’s Mission District where grade school and high school students get after-school one-on-one mentoring in writing.

She not only edited “I Might Get Somewhere: Oral Histories of Immigration and Migration,” she also wrote the foreword. The book is a compilation of the writings of Balboa High School students, one of many that have been published by 826 Valencia through the years.

“The students interviewed their families about how they came to the US. The stories were very, very dramatic and life-changing for some of them because they had never asked their parents before. One found out that his parents were hiding in the jungle from soldiers who wanted to shoot them, and another one, that his parents had been on the back of a truck going into the US from Mexico. They were harrowing stories, remarkable true stories.”

Tan has also given scholarships to some of 826 Valencia’s very talented kids for another program where Nobel laureates, astronauts, artists, writers, musicians and other members from many different disciplines mentor the youth.

Promoting community reading

Besides being required reading in schools all over the United States and around the world, Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club” is among the selections in The Big Read, a community-wide literary reading program in the United States supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

NEA’s The Big Read promotes the reading of books selected by the whole community, not just a book club, school or library. When a particular city chooses a book, it receives some materials and funding from NEA to promote the event.

If the book is “Joy Luck,” for instance, there might be a mah jong game, a dragon dance, fortune-cookie making for kids, a marathon reading and a discussion.

“Mine was one of the first 10 Big Read books,” said Tan. She was also, for a time, the only living writer featured in the program so, she said, she got asked by a lot of communities to read.