The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screening Self-Sovereignty in Asian/America [Paperback]

InThe Movies of Racial ChildhoodsCeline Parreñas Shimizu examines early twenty-first-century cinematic representations of Asian and Asian American children. Drawing on psychoanalysis and her own perspective as a mother grieving for a deceased child, Shimizu considers how cinema renders Asian American children through sexualized racial difference, infantilization, and premature adultification. She looks at how Asian American childhood is characterized in film through experiences of alienation and trauma and contends that childhood development requires finding freedom and self-sovereignty through agentic attunement. In analyzing films that focus on queer Asian American youth such asSpa Night(2016) andDriveways(2019) and those that explore the trauma of being an immigrant likeYellow Rose(2019) andThe Half of It(2020), Shimizu demonstrates that films can prompt viewers to evaluate their own childhood development. They also allow the opportunity to understand the demands placed upon Asian American children, particularly in regard to race and sexuality. In this way, cinema becomes a vehicle for empowering our inner child and the children all around us.USCeline Parreñas Shimizu examines early twenty-first-century cinematic representations of Asian and Asian American children, showing how films allow viewers the opportunity to understand the demands and difficulties placed upon Asian American children.Celine Parreñas Shimizu is Dean of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is author ofThe Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene, also published by Duke University Press. Her films includeThe Celine Archiveand80 Years Later(Women Make Movies).“The relative absence of Asian Americans on the silver screen makes their representation something we cannot not want. In this profound and personal3!