When I became a mother, I desperately needed to see women like me reflected onscreen. Finally, it's starting to happen.
Fresh Off the BoatI’ve been waiting for her return in literature for more than two decades. The ’90s was her heyday, when Amy Tan’s took the literary world, and then Hollywood, by storm. The stories of four Asian American mother-daughter pairs marred by unspeakable trauma, struggling to express hope and love in translation, became a global phenomenon within the Asian community and beyond.was the first time I felt the alchemy of fiction.
Without sightings of her, I’d grown up and given up. Decades of being mistaken for other Asians, of being asked where I’m from, of rarely seeing Asian authors on best-seller lists had taken its toll; I stopped looking to books to make sense of my Asianness. I abandoned the power of fiction to make me feel known.
Then, in 2016, I had my first child. Suddenly, my need for the Asian American mom became urgent. I needed her after my daughter’s traumatic birth, I needed her when I wasn’t sure if I had postpartum depression, I needed her when I doubted my ability to look after my captivatingly precious but astoundingly fragile baby. But she wasn’t there.My anger blazed as my daughter grew.
But it wasn’t until 2022 that I witnessed the return of the Asian American mom in full force. Leading the charge was Jessamine Chan’s. The dystopian satire follows Frida Liu, who, after leaving her daughter unattended, is forcibly enrolled in a reformatory school for bad moms. To see her daughter again, she must pass motherhood tests with a robot daughter who is transmitting data about her parenting—how long she maintains eye contact, the length of her hug, the spark in her stories.
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