This seems to happen a lot – collective bashing of Amy Tan by progressive, intellectual Asian Americans for creating that Chinatown-centric, exotified genre of writing that publishers can’t look beyond.

I remember hungrily reading the thick paperback version of The Joy Luck Club when I was in 9th grade, but more visceral was going to see the movie when I was 15 years old with my mother. I remember crying boatloads of tears, feeling some kind of release at seeing the portrayals of difficult mother-daughter relationships. I was in the throes of teen angst back then and my mother and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on anything, the cultural gap between us was a giant chasm. It was years before I understood this seperation more clearly and we worked through it – but I remember, for a moment, in that theater that we felt connected. Later, my hip, intellectual uncle asked me what I thought of the movie and I told him how much I loved it. He chided me for falling for such crap and I remember defending it by saying he didn’t understand because he was a man. Sigh, how far I’ve come from those hungry days of grasping at any kind of representation.

But even though I’ve grown a lot in the past 16 years since I first read the book, the story refuses to go away. The Pan-Asian Repertory Theater in New York City is doing a revival of Susan Kim’s stage adaptation of The Joy Luck Club.

I don't know a whole heck of a lot about theater, but I know revivals come with a lot of thought. So, why this play at this time? Is there a certain political or cultural resonance? Last year, the theater showed a one-act by Philip Kan Gotanda about a troubled marriage between a Japanese American woman and her African American husband and Tea, about five Japanese American war brides who move to Kansas. PLus a revival of the Vincent Chin-inspired Carry the Tiger to the Mountain, which actually sounds really awesome.

Anyway, in this interview, the young, Asian American actresses talk about the universality of the play and the strong characters they get to play, but I'm still not sold. Shouldn't big Asian American theater companies be pushing for new, interesting work? Or is this a ploy to get mainstream America to come to the play?