Jen Sookfong Lee and I had a crush on the same type of boy growing up. The creative, sensitive, poetry-reading boy who was perfectly captured in the Dead Poets Society. While it seems like a harmless crush, one sparked by fictional characters, it forms a ‘type’ that is often non-existent. From my own experience, this sensitive, passionate type vanished in the face of the condescending, blazer-wearing boys in my intro to philosophy class who were far more pretentious than they ever were creative.
When Lee revisits this crush, she notes that the sensitive, passionate boy—so carefully presented in film—was actually quite obsessive and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. And it’s heartbreaking to recognize, years later, that the false romance of it all camouflaged this disturbing behaviour—it’s incredible what perspective and a critical eye can reveal.
In Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart, Lee traces her relationship with pop culture from childhood through to adulthood, revisiting key moments in her own life alongside the books, films, songs, and tv shows that were so significant to her at every stage. From reading Anne of Green Gables after losing her father, to revisiting films like the Dead Poets Society, Lee examines pop culture moments with both emotional and essayistic precision.
In doing so, Lee explores the many ways pop culture brought her comfort when she was grieving, and companionship when she was lonely, but she also underlines the number of times it sparked anger and rage. Lee delves into the lack of representation in the stories, shows, and movies she grew up with; the limiting and problematic narrative of the “good Asian girl” she was expected to fit into; and the prevalence and violence of Asian fetishisation.
Blending memoir and criticism, Lee ties each pop culture moment to honest and vulnerable explorations of her own relationships with family, with grief, with mental health, and with identity and belonging.
There’s such an energy to this book that has you turning page after page. It is a sprawling narrative that touches on so many points, which is often engaging but sometimes loses its footing. Some chapters seem to unravel along the way while others feel more like standalone essays. Despite the occasional ebb in the narrative, I cherished Lee’s writing on grief and mental health, marriage and divorce, and the creative process and single motherhood for its brutal honesty, vulnerability, and humour.
I would highly recommend Lee’s Superfan to anyone looking for an exciting new take on pop culture and on memoir as a genre!
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A big thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for sending Lee’s memoir my way!
Sydney K Erickson 
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