Voyage through childhood into the adult world: an overview of Chinese American children and youth in cinema

ABSTRACT

Literature from various social science and humanities disciplines has pointed to the fear, stress, threats, and hardship frequently experienced by children of immigrants. In coping with the stereotyped images such as ‘the model minority’ and ‘the perpetual foreigner’, the subject of Chinese American children and youth has drawn much scholarly attention, although with little systematic focus in the field of visual arts – including films. Accordingly, this article explores how cinema has depicted and represented the role and experience of Chinese children and youth in the context of transnational migration, by focusing on a range of migration-related film examples made by transnational Chinese filmmakers from the 1980s onwards. These films show that while some children carry the burden of the adult world, some adults also carry the burdens of childhood into later life. Furthermore, the films also present the development of immigrant Chinese children’ subjectivity, while dealing with hardship, confusion, demanding parents, and ever-changing and challenging environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Cinema
• children
• Chinese
• model minority
• youth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 30919013302]; The Jiangsu Overseas Visiting Scholar Program for University Prominent Young and Middle-aged Teachers and Presidents; The Chinese National Ministry of Education, Humanities and Social Science [grant number 16YJC760013].