The Hundred Secret Senses

Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses (1996) focuses on the relationship between Olivia and her half-sister, Kwan. The well-known author of two widely successful novels: The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, her previous books focused on the tortured lives of older generation women whose journey brought them from China to America. Another of Tan’s contrasting themes is these women’s frustration with their American-born daughters.

In The Hundred Secret Senses, Tan’s attention shifts to explore the relationship between sisters. Olivia (Laguni) Bishop, a travel photographer, is the story’s primary protagonist and narrator. Born to an American mother and a Chinese father, Olivia’s father died when she was four years old. Kwan Li, her half-sister, is the product of their father’s first marriage and is twelve years older than Olivia. Olivia and Kwan have a difficult and complicated relationship. Kwan is outwardly annoying, naïve, and eccentric. She tells otherworldly stories of mystics and magic. She came to San Francisco from her home in China when she was eighteen years old. Believing she can see the dead, she fancies herself a medium. Her conversations with ghosts land her in a psychiatric institution not long after her arrival in America.

Olivia, now in her late thirties, has been fully integrated into American society. Demanding and cynical, she has been forever embarrassed by Kwan’s outlandish behavior though she is secretly fascinated with her stories. Olivia begrudges her sister her strengths, going out of her way to ignore her.



In spite of Olivia’s behavior, Kwan is undeterred and remains fiercely loyal to Olivia She sets her sights on reuniting Olivia with her estranged husband, Simon. Her plan includes luring the couple to her home in Changmian, China. However, Kwan’s loftiest goal is one that is spiritual in nature. She wants Olivia to acknowledge that the World of Yin, a place that exists in Kwan’s mind, is real.

Kwan’s story is the second narrative. It focuses on her fate in a former life when she was a one-eyed servant named Nunumu. She was employed by Western missionaries as a young servant girl in Changmian during the 1800s. This story of reincarnation and also of Nunumu’s friendship with an American woman named Miss Nelly Banner is a bridge between reality and the spirit world. In time, it becomes clear that Kwan’s connection to Olivia and Nunumu’s to Miss Banner are related.

Due to a travel magazine assignment, Olivia, Simon, and Kwan travel to Changmian. As the tone of the novel shifts, Olivia comes to embrace Kwan’s belief in a shadow world with secret senses. By the end of the novel, Olivia is a true convert.



Olivia has several choices to make. The first is choosing between the Chinese and American experience and with which culture she will ultimately identify. It is, in part, this identification that thwarts her ability to believe in the other-worldly at first. The bigger choice is the one between her lofty pragmatism and making room for her spiritual truths. Kwan’s character, though easily written off as flaky by Western standards, emerges as both pure of heart and wise. Olivia comes to rely on her older sister’s wisdom while facing her own flaws and finding her strengths.

Tan taps into our hidden desires, which have to do with our own relationships to our dead and how they inform our lives. Kwan’s unfaltering belief in the World of Yin serves as the anchor point in this novel about loyalty, love, and two separate countries bound by spiritual ties. Tan’s prose is vivid. Kwan’s voice is unforgettable. She is as good-natured as she is culturally marooned, able to fluidly straddle two worlds. Her powerful belief in her ability to see beyond this realm serves as a counterpoint to Olivia’s masked uncertainties. Though Olivia treats her sister with disdain, she is secretly enamored of Kwan’s stories. This story of yin and yang are about opposite sides of the same coin, the balance being the key.

Amy Tan is an American writer. She has frequently explored the lives of first-generation Asian Americans. In 1993, her novel The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a successful film. She has written several other novels, including The Hundred Secret Senses, as well as a collection of non-fiction essays. Tan has also written two children’s books. She is currently the literary editor for West Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine.