But for literary fans, the greatest treat of this deep dive is footage of Tan performing as the lead singer of the band the Rock Bottom Remainders, a touring music group comprised of other bestselling authors like Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Scott Turow. Even Tan’s own sketches, as she’s recently begun to foray in nature journaling, make their way into the film.Īfter “Joy Luck Club” and despite the attention it brought her, Tan still managed to turn out a raft of bestselling novels: “The Kitchen God’s Wife,” “The Hundred Secret Senses,” “The Bonesetter’s Daughter,” “Saving Fish from Drowning,” and “The Valley of Amazement” among them. But to break the film out of simply being a talking heads affair, there are also whimsical animations, tableaux vivant that illustrate key chapters in Tan’s life without ever feeling precious. Testimonies from Tan’s editor and mentor Molly Giles, as well as luminaries like “Crazy Rich Asians” author Kevin Kwan and Chilean writer Isabel Allende, another literary figure who broke barriers for representation, exemplify how Tan is beloved. But her celebrity forced her to take on the position of serving as a mouthpiece for Asian American identity, and she had to go up against literary critics that accused her of Orientalist tropes and white racist fakery - criticisms that seem just baffling now, especially when coming from white writers. I didn’t seek to be a representative of a whole community.
But that phenomenon brought the added onus for Tan of being a spokesperson for her generation. Indeed, there is darkness that sneaks into Tan’s life story, including her own struggle with Lyme disease and her recovery, and her self-doubt after the success of “The Joy Luck Club” turned the novel into a movie directed by Wayne Wang in 1993 that became a beacon for Asian American audiences looking for representation in the multiplexes.
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