The ANU women department's intersectional feminist Magazine

This article was originally published in ‘Vestige’, Bossy’s 2023 print edition.

This article contains film spoilers.

When Hollywood made Joy Ride earlier this year, I felt compelled not only to watch it, but also critique its depiction of transracial adoption—a story that hits so close to home as a Chinese Australian adoptee myself. Joy Ride follows Asian American lawyer, Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park) and her three friends—Lolo Chen (Sherry Cola), Kat Huang (Stephanie Hsu) and Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), as they travel to China and assist in Audrey’s adoption story and reunion with her birth parents. At a time when Asian American films are gaining praise and recognition (think of the successes of Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All at Once), Joy Ride is described by Hsu as “the first of its kind” because of the way comedy intertwines with an emotional plot to deliver a fresh story not yet known to Hollywood.

American-Chinese actress and fellow adoptee Kira Omans put it aptly when she posted: “As an Asian American actress, I always want to support Asian American women leading blockbuster movies. As a Chinese adoptee, I never want these films’ successes to come at the expense of the adoptee community.” This second sentence strikes at the heart of the difficulty in analysing Joy Ride given the blurred lines between raunchy comedy, complex life experiences and film representations. Comedy is what the film falls back on when we’re confronted with painful realisations and uncomfortable truths. It can be incredibly valuable, yet damaging at the same time. As a Chinese adoptee, I expect that different elements of Joy Ride will both resonate and fail to resonate with members of the transracial adoptee community—what I fear is how adoptees, birth searches and homeland journeys will be perceived to the film’s wider audience. There are many elements of this film I could discuss but for the sake of brevity, I want to focus on three main aspects of the film’s plotline: the formation of the quartet; the nature of the birth search and the reunion outcome or ending.

One of the most universally understood tropes in the film is the friendship dynamic between the four main characters. As Audrey assembles in the airport with her ride-or-die friend from her childhood days, Lolo, her friend from college and now famous actress, Kat, and non-binary acquaintance Deadeye, my first reaction to such a group was: wow, Audrey Sullivan is so lucky. Isolation is one of the most common and prevalent feelings that transracial adoptees experience when figuring out their identity. Much of this isolation is internalized, an internal conflict between not feeling enough to fit in with your birth culture but not looking white enough to fit in with white culture. For myself, growing up in a predominately white suburb made me aware that I was in the minority and despite my parents’ best efforts to help me integrate with other Asian transracial adoptees, it made me highly uncomfortable and distressed. Whilst the background and demographic of my friends diversified in high school, I was reminded by my Asian friends of a cultural upbringing that I looked like I should have experienced but did not. It is this conflict, this duality that just is and cannot be changed. For Audrey, isolation is highlighted in her white, male-dominated workplace and the conflict arises when she is requested to visit China to make a business deal she swiftly accepts. Not all transracial adoptees would return to their birth country at the drop of a hat because, quite literally, there is so much (emotional) baggage in making such a journey. Her friendships, regardless of the chaos and trouble they get up to are what allow her to cross this threshold and, in a way, protect her from the conflict between her Asian-ness and white-ness. It is not until an argument with her three friends towards the end of the film that this conflict is touched upon. However, at this stage, the choice of searching for her birth mother is already made up for Audrey, reflecting this conflict coming ahead and being the most glaring, frustrating aspect of this comedy.

The idea of returning home and embarking on a birth parents search is fraught with anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. One of the most common questions I’m asked after ‘declaring’ I’m adopted is whether I can or would want to meet my birth parents. The curiosity and good intentions are there but there is no onus on an adoptee to share this information. At the beginning of the film, Audrey is adamant that she doesn’t want to reunite with her birth mother. Once she is in China, however, it becomes an unavoidable subject after Chinese businessman, Chao (Ronny Chieng) asks: “if you don’t know where you come from, how do you know who you are?” This not only encapsulates the aforementioned conflict and duality but illuminates this anxiety and uncertainty of searching for birth parents. The question implies that unless transracial adoptees know where and who they came from, they are unable to accept their identity and will be unsatisfied until they find out. The approach to birth searches is varied and complex and whilst DNA databases exist to facilitate birth searches, not every transracial adoptee wants to embark on this experience. As Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s 2019 documentary One Child Nation reveals, even when a DNA match between a transracial adoptee and birth family is found, the former may not want to have a reunion at that point in their life. In Joy Ride, the birth parent search exists to carry the story of Audrey’s friendships and explain the wild ride they take. As a comedy, it conveniently works but it is also very flawed.

One of the most poignant moments of Joy Ride is toward the ending when Audrey visits the orphanage where she was relinquished and discovers that her mother is of Korean, not Chinese descent as previously believed. The news that her mother passed away years earlier but left a recorded video message for her daughter to find is heart-wrenching and authentic to watch knowing that any reunion would be painful and traumatic. Truer words were never spoken when Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE said: “adoption loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful.” It’s at this very moment in Joy Ride where I can truly empathise with both Audrey and her birth mother – for loss and grief are something transracial adoptees carry for life as it shakes our very sense of belonging, home, and identity. Like the city in which the quartet end up in, Paris, the ending of Joy Ride is romanticised, hopeful and aspirational. And whilst I am inspired by this group of friends and like Audrey, love my birth parents and do not resent being adopted, not all transracial adoptees will share this experience.

Regardless of whether I would return to China with a group of fellow Asian female friends and despite the catalyst for travelling to China, Joy Ride is more about the friendships than commentating on a transracial adoptee’s journey. And at some level I think I can accept this, because what a film like Joy Ride can do is open conversations around the issues it explores. This may sound like a cop-out and a cliché, but it is really a way for transracial adoptees to explain our own story, support Asian representation, pick apart inaccuracies and who knows, maybe even embrace our own joy ride.