Author: Edited and with an introduction by Peter X Feng
Subject: Film and Media/Asian American Studies
Paper ISBN 0-8135-3025-3
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-3024-5
Pages: 304 pp., 12 b&w illus.
Series: Rutgers Depth of Field

View the table of contents for Screening Asian Americans
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Description: Examines the significance and cultural importance of Asian American film.

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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. The history of Asian Americans on movie screens, as outlined in Peter X Fengs introduction, provides a context for the individual readings that follow. 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 filmmakersTheresa Hak Kyung Cha, Ang Lee, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Wayne Wangand films such as The Wedding Banquet, Surname Viet Given Name Nam, and Chan is Missing.

Throughout the volume, as Feng explains, the term screening has a twofold meaningreferring to the projection of Asian Americans as cinematic bodies and the screening out of elements connected with these images. In this doubling, film representation can function to define what is American and what is foreign. Asian American filmmaking is one of the fastest growing areas of independent and studio production. This volume is key to understanding the vitality of this new cinema.

Peter X Feng teaches English and womens studies at the University of Delaware.