Coming of age in Chinatown is hardly an individual experience; it’s a family affair. “Freckled Rice,” a 1983 film directed by Stephen C. Ning, is a story about 13-year-old, American-born Joe Soo (J.P. Wing) who grows up in Boston’s Chinatown in the 1960s. ...
‘Dinner Party’ creates space for us to imagine a better future
Written By: Kyubin Kim This article may contain spoilers. Content warning: sexual assault. For many of us, the world we’re living in now is much different from the world we grew up in. As our knowledge of human experiences broa ...
Conversations with friends: ‘See You Then’ finds power in subtlety
Written By: Kyubin Kim This article may contain spoilers. Throughout the past few months, we've been slowly trickling out of isolation and into “hot vax summer,” and that also meant having awkward conversations with friends we ...
‘Mickey on the Road’ celebrates female heroes
Written By: Kyubin Kim This article may contain spoilers. Since her childhood growing up in Taiwan under martial law, director Mian-Mian Lu has been pushing conventional boundaries. In high school, Lu started a drama club and d ...
Not half but double: ‘Inbetween Girl’ is a thoughtful homage to the quiet teenage growing pains
Written By: Kyubin Kim This article may contain spoilers. There’s something magical happening with teen coming-of-age stories lately and I spoke with lead actor Emma Galbraith to discuss our love of the YA genre, collaborative ...
‘Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir’: Reflections on an Asian American literary legacy
Written By: Kyubin Kim For many accomplished and aspiring Asian American writers, myself included in the latter, Amy Tan’s novel “The Joy Luck Club” was our gateway drug into the Asian American literary canon. Published in 1989, “The Joy Lu ...
‘Nomadland’: Beneath the beauty that veils the film’s contradictions
Written By: Kyubin Kim During a global pandemic when we are sequestered in our homes, road movies hit a certain kind of nerve. While watching director Chloé Zhao’s sprawling film “Nomadland” (2020) set across windy sea cliffs and sunsets stretching acro ...