In March, when Jeff Yang was preparing for the release of his book “Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now,” he and his co-authors, Philip Wang and Phil Yu, found the moment somewhat bittersweet. Their work, a celebration of Asian American pop culture, was arriving right when it seemed like a new chapter of that history was unfolding in real time. That same month, for instance, the Michelle Yeoh-led “Everything Everywhere All At Once” would be released and go on to become both a blockbuster hit and an Oscars darling.
Yeoh herself would end up writing the foreword to “The Golden Screen: The Movies that Made Asian America,” Yang’s wide-ranging new book that, amid a burgeoning golden era of Asian American cinema, serves as a kind of colorful mixtape examining the many works that have shaped our understanding of the AAPI community. The author spoke to the Chronicle about his book, what it says about Asian America, and the limits of representation.
Q: What was your process in culling together the films included in this book?
A: There are 138 movies in the book. I’d probably watched at least two-thirds before, but a lot of them so long ago and in such different circumstances that I felt I had to rewatch them. And then there were films that I’d never seen, films that I hadn’t seen just by circumstance or because they were difficult films to get access to. By bringing in other people to talk about their experiences watching films, I essentially created a community of movie watchers who kept on bringing up their own movies that weren’t on the list.
Q: That really speaks to how many obscure gems of Asian American cinema there are. What were some of those recommendations about films that stood out to you as undiscovered but seminal?
A: There are films that…
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