The writer himself is not "Asian American," but the text and its narrative could arguably be classified as such. If you read the artist's note at the back of the book, Tan notes that he drew from Ellis Island photographic archives (portraits of immigrants) for many of the portraits on the end pages. Also, Asian American literary studies as a field has been pushing hard on the national-qualifier "American," pushing for understandings of transnational connections with other nations as well as ways of classifying texts/authors in ways that exceed national identity. In this sense, Tan's work could certainly be characterized as part of an Asian diasporic textual coalition, particularly an Anglophone one. The comparative multiculturalisms of the United States, Canada, and Australia are also one way that people have been re-conceptualizing the field as well as the kinds of texts we should study in relation to each other.