Here’s a new way of thinking about it. “Asian American films” are generic American films. Some generic American films are about Italian-American crime families

Here’s a new way of thinking about it. “Asian American films” are generic American films. Some generic American films are about Italian-American crime families in New York, some are about Indigenous teenagers in Oklahoma, some are about detectives in Minneapolis. And some are about Chinese-American immigrants in Los Angeles county. Generic American film audiences often get excited about films that tell stories they can easily identify with or that speak to their own life experiences, especially if those films are relatively rare.