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This innovative essay collection explores Asian American cinematic representations historically and socially, on and off screen, as they contribute to the definition of American character. Asian American cinema is charted in its diversity, ranging across activist, documentary, experimental, and fictional modes, and encompassing a wide range of ethnicities (Filipino, Vietnamese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese). Covered in the discussion are filmmakers -- Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Ang Lee, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Wayne Wang -- and films such as The Wedding Banquet, Surname Viet Given Name Nam, and Chan is Missing.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Asian American Bodies
Filming "Chinatown": Fake Visions, Bodily Transformations
The Early Years: Asians in the American Films Prior to World War II (excerpt, with a new introduction)
The Desiring of Asian Female Bodies: Interracial Romance and Cinematic Subjection
Histories of Asian American Cinema
A History in Progress: Asian American Media Arts Centers, 1970-1990
Identity and Difference in "Filipino/a American" Media Arts
A Peculiar Sensation: A Personal Genealogy of Korean American Women's Cinema
Asian American Film and Video in Context
Historical Consciousness and the Viewer: Who Killed Vincent Chin?
The Politics of Video Memory: Electronic Erasures and Inscriptions
Being Chinese American, Becoming Asian American: Chan is Missing
Emigrants Twice Displace: Race, Color, and Identity in Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala
Surname Viet Given Name Nam: Spreading Rumors & Ex/Changing Histories
Good Clean Fung
"From the multitude of narratives...For another telling for another recitation": Constructing and Re-constructing Dictee and Memory/all echo
Coming Out into the Global System: Postmodern Patriarchies and Transnational Sexualities in The Wedding Banquet
On Fire
Contributors
Index
About the author
PETER X. FENG teaches English and women's studies at the University of Delaware.
Summary
This essay collection explores Asian-American cinematic representations historically and socially, on and off screen, as they contribute to the definition of American character. The history of Asian Americans on movie screens in the introduction provides a context for the readings that follow.
