1/8/2024 0 Comments Spectre filterHer crisis of confidence was partly allayed by a stint with the Rock Bottom Remainders, the all-star-writers novelty band whose lineup also included Stephen King, Scott Turow, Barbara Kingsolver and Matt Groening. But when the backlash against Tan’s work is mentioned, including the assertion that as the key figure addressing the erasure of Asians from American cultural life she almost inevitably established a set of Asian stereotypes that were then enthusiastically embraced by the (white) mainstream, it is framed almost entirely in terms of the psychological challenge to Tan’s self-confidence. (Though as she wittily points out, it was actually her second best-seller, the first being a manual she wrote for IBM as a jobbing technical writer). 1 best-seller that she even dared to consider being a full-time novelist. “Often I think I’m dreaming my life,” she says, recounting how it wasn’t until well after “The Joy Luck Club” had become The New York Times’ longest-ever No. Tan, now an elegant lady in her late 60s with a sharp bob and a wryly soft-spoken manner, seems gratified but also bemused at her career trajectory. But barely explored is the contradiction that arises when despite your humble approach, you become, intentionally or otherwise, the voice-of-a-generation representative for an entire diaspora. Tan’s genius, as several publishing and media-industry interviewees assert, was in creating widely relatable fiction out of the idiosyncratic, specific details of her life (such as the actual Joy Luck Club, a loose affiliation, founded by her parents, of first-generation Chinese immigrants who’d gather around dining-room tables to eat, discuss business and gossip over mahjong). This humility makes the film both endearing and a little frustrating. It’s an approach that seems to emanate from the subject herself: Whatever self-regard might be implied by the term “memoir” is swiftly dispelled by its “unintended” nature. And the late James Redford‘s pleasant, sympathetic biographical documentary, “Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir” is careful to avoid any such overstatement: It presents Tan’s fascinating life story from an intimate perspective, which is engaging and compelling on the level of personal reminiscence, but perhaps inevitably falls short in the broader assessment of her cultural impact. Novelist Amy Tan‘s centrality to the history of Asian American representation in literature and on-screen cannot be overstated.
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