In many ways, The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) is a very different novel to those that preceded it, not least because it failed to achieve the critical acclaim and attention of Amy Tan's highly successful The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife. What also distinguishes Tan's third novel is its focus on a different intercultural relationship between two half sisters, the American-born Olivia Yee and the Chinese-born Kwan Li, along with its representation of a different history and a different reality: mid-nineteenth century China and the “World of Yin” (p. 3). These differences mark something of a departure from the matrilineal narrative, and with this departure comes a realistic and, at times, semi-autobiographical rendering of historical experiences specific to the twentieth century, most obviously the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) and the Cultural Revolution (1949)....
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Citation: Adams, Bella. "The Hundred Secret Senses". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 January 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=542, accessed 12 February 2026.]
