The AAPI Movies That Helped Me Fall (More) in Love With Myself

The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.

By Mirachelle Anselmo

A common storyline among Asian Americans—intertwined with their stories of trying to assimilate in the so-called “Western culture”—consists of story arcs of self-love, self-acceptance, and above everything, familial love. Romantic love can be sprinkled throughout, but it doesn’t hold as much weight as the others.

I identify as a first-generation Filipino American. My family and I immigrated to the United States in the late ‘90s and quickly learned to assimilate to the world around us. As I reached my teenage years and my subsequent young adulthood, I yearned to feel closer to my identity as an Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI), scouring every form of media for stories more like mine.

These are the movies that have helped me move towards a greater love and appreciation for the narrative I carry.

Mulan (1998)

You can’t have a list of AAPI-focused movie storylines without the Disney heroine of my childhood. I had seven Barbies and one Mulan doll—can you guess which doll had the most wear and tear? Mulan’s main drive to succeed in this movie is to defend her family’s honor, not by impressing the matchmaker but by disguising herself as a man and taking her ailing father’s place in the Imperial Chinese Army. Throughout the movie she worries her act of rebellion will not bring pride to her parents and ancestors. But if putting your life on the line for your family isn’t seen as a major act of love, then I really don’t know what is.

Always Be My Maybe

I remember when this was on the front page of Netflix. Ali Wong was riding her wave of fame from her two comedy specials and Randall Park was just hitting mainstream success. But two Asian Americans as romantic leads? Front and center on Netflix? To me, this was mind-blowing. This was the first movie that went against the stereotypical AAPI narrative of being successful by becoming a doctor, lawyer, or other estimable position. It also pushed the narrative of a strong, ambitious woman who maybe lost sight of her cultural and familial values. When this movie was released I was in grad school for my Master’s in Chemistry, and I definitely felt empowered (and seen!) through the narrative of wanting to succeed while also trying to find the path back to being familiar with my culture.

Turning Red

This movie stars a cute little girl with a bob who learns French, plays the flute, and wants to make her family happy while also trying to find her own path in life. You know who else fit that narrative perfectly when she was a young girl? Me. Disney really hit it out of the park with this release, and I showed them that by streaming this no less than 20 times in the year it came out. The movie follows the main character, Mei, as she goes through a Disneyfied, fuzzy, and yet magical depiction of puberty. Along the way, Mei finds out that the way she wants to live her life may be different from the way her mother has laid out, and deals with the turbulence of those two battles happening coincidentally with one another. Yes, I cried—scratch that, SOBBED—at the ending scene between her and her mother. And yes, I texted my mom immediately to tell her to watch this movie.

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Obviously, this list had to have the AAPI darling and Best Picture of the 2023 Oscars. Who can forget the red carpet hug between Ke Huy Quan and Harrison Ford? Or all the historic awards the movie won? Or Michelle Yeoh just being a queen in general? This fantastical movie that involves piles of tax papers and rows of washing machines focuses on the love an immigrant family has for each other. Although the start of the movie focuses on Yeoh and Quan’s characters’ divorce, the main struggle is between a mother trying to connect with her daughter, and a daughter just wanting a mother to see her as she really is. I took myself out on a solo date to watch this movie and had to stifle open-mouthed sobs during that ending parking lot scene.

Joy Ride

Like Bridesmaids, but with a focus on family and identity, this feel-good movie about four unlikely friends was laugh-out-loud good. With the Chinese countryside as its setting, the movie asks: What makes up the roots of our identity? Our biological family or the family we choose to surround ourselves with? The comedic heroes in this movie really push against the trope of the meek, quiet, and prudish Asian woman, making me proud of the loud and boisterous person I’ve become.

The Farewell

The Farewell focuses on a form of love represented in a lot of different Asian cultures, which is seen through the emotional burden of the collective. Awkwafina’s character, Billi, loves her paternal grandmother, Nai Nai, very much. Her family decides to not tell Nai Nai that the source of her illness is actually terminal cancer, and that her doctor has said she only has months to live. Her family then stages a fakeish wedding to justify all of the family coming out to China and, against her family’s wishes due to her inability to hide her feelings, Billi joins too. Her uncle explains: “You think one’s life belongs to oneself. But that’s the difference between the East and the West. In the East, a person’s life is part of a whole. Family. Society. […] it’s our duty to carry this emotional burden for her.” The push and pull of her Eastern culture and Western way of life—on top of the fear of disappointing her family as the eldest daughter as she struggles through her career—is something I very much empathize with as I hobble my way into my thirties. As is accurate with most A24 movies, I cried sparingly during the movie, but had a collective sob during the credits.

The Joy Luck Club

A mere 10 minutes after finishing The Farewell, I pressed play on The Joy Luck Club. Structured like an ensemble movie (think Love Actually but with the struggles multiplied tenfold, or even a hundredfold), The Joy Luck Club focuses on four pairs of mothers and daughters, where the mothers’ struggles with their respective mothers reflect and bleed into the following generation. (Can someone say “generational trauma”?) The daughters all believe their mothers don’t understand the problems they’re going through, but actually their problems are mere echoes of the struggles their respective mothers have already pushed through and braved. Through major sacrifice, they’d trudged through the struggles of patriarchal society, carried their entire lives over to America, and are now in disbelief of the situations their daughters find themselves in. Regardless of the rift that builds between mother and daughter, they find their way back to each other and relish in the strength they’ve gained from their journeys.

A Fitting Journey’s End

It’s hard not to think about what my parents had to go through to bring my brother and me here to America. Their love for us was so strong that they moved everything they had, thousands of miles away from everything they knew, to a country they only had an idea of.

For many AAPI people and movie characters like me, our love for our parents is so strong that we carry the emotional burden of knowing we may want to live our lives differently than the ways they had envisioned for us, and struggle to figure out simply how to break it to them.

So it’s fitting that my journey of seeing my narrative spread across these movies ended one Thursday night in a big, heavy, relieving sob.

Mirachelle Anselmo has an unexplainable, scientific-adjacent day job and resides in the great city of Chicago with her anxious emotional support dog, Sofia. She is also a shameless wannabe writer and regularly spills her emotions in her newsletter, Sunday Stretch.