[Download] "More to the Chinese Side: The Ruminations of a Fifth-Generation Chinese American Filmmaker (8D Paper) (Personal Account)" by Chinese America: History and Perspectives " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: More to the Chinese Side: The Ruminations of a Fifth-Generation Chinese American Filmmaker (8D Paper) (Personal Account)
- Author : Chinese America: History and Perspectives
- Release Date : January 01, 2007
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 210 KB
Description
My Chinese American experience is probably different from yours. We, fourth- and fifth-generation Chinese Americans, represent only about 10 percent of the entire Chinese American population. Many of us, like myself, don't look typically Chinese, our mixed-race blood often masking our Chinese heritage. Because our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers were part of the original wave of Chinese immigration in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, ours seems the experience most often relegated to the history books. The railroad worker, the cook or laundryman, the prostitute: our families' stories have become caricatures forever trapped in the past. Like so many Asian American artists, I became a filmmaker to see myself represented. I was tired of watching the same film about the tribulations of the white middle class that I had seen the week before. I was equally frustrated with the state of Chinese American cinema, where the majority of films seemed to be about the struggles between present-day ABCs (i.e., American-born Chinese) and their Chinese-born parents. As a fifth-generation Chinese American of mixed descent, I knew that the diversity of stories in our community was much greater than what was being represented in either community or mainstream media. Fueled by a desire to see my Chinese American experience represented, I became a filmmaker.