Jen Sookfong Lee’s memoir Superfan looks at her life through pop culture lens

In Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart East Vancouver’s Jen Sookfong Lee celebrates pop culture by running large chunks of her life through its lens.

“I spent a lot of years arguing with people why pop culture was important or meant something in the same breath that you would argue for, I don’t know, the photographs of Cindy Sherman or the paintings of Mark Rothko, or whatever,” said the award-winning Lee, who is also an acquiring editor for ECW Press, during a phone interview. “Part of the argument that I make about why pop culture is important was I’d say this is what this particular thing meant for me in my life. As I kept doing this over most of my adulthood, I thought you know what I think there might be a book there. Then I started writing it.”

Lee, the author of 10 books including The Conjoined, The End of East and The Better Mother, entertainingly mixes memoir and commentary as she digs into a wide range of both personal and universal topics, including grief, family, Asian fetish, and the idea of what constitutes a “good Chinese girl.”