A TODAY Show Recommended Read, this beautifully intimate
memoir-in-pieces uses one woman's life-long love affair with pop culture
as a revelatory lens to explore family, identity, belonging, grief, and
the power of female rage. Named a most anticipated book of the year by
the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.
For most of Jen Sookfong Lee's life, pop culture was an escape from
family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around
her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that, despite losing her father
at the age of twelve, one day she might still have the loving family of
her dreams. Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being
a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up, she began to recognize
the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her--the
child of Chinese immigrant parents who looked for safety in the
invisibility afforded by embracing model minority myths.
Ranging from the unattainable perfection of Gwyneth Paltrow and the
father-figure familiarity of Bob Ross, to the long shadow cast by The
Joy Luck Club and the life lessons she has learned from Rihanna, Jen
weaves together key moments in pop culture with stories of her own
failings, longings, and struggles as she navigates the minefields that
come with carving her own path as an Asian woman, single mother, and
writer. And with great wit, bracing honesty, and a deep appreciation for
the ways culture shapes us, she draws direct lines between the spectacle
of the popular, the intimacy of our personal bonds, and the social
foundations of our collective obsessions.
