ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief history of Asian American filmmaking and the themes that characterized their storytelling. It then examines three Asian American documentaries—Ramona Diaz's Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey, Evan Jackson Leong's Linsanity, and Tadashi Nakamura's Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings—in order to consider these shifting sensibilities and thematics. In addition to expanding the definition of Asian American cultural identity to include more transnational perspectives, the chapter argues that these films continue to examine and explicitly deal with countering the age-old stereotype that Asians in the United States are "perpetual foreigners", or outsiders who never truly belong in the United States or become part of American cultural identity. By focusing on individual Asian American celebrities, the films also reflect the ways in which Asian American identities have begun permeating the global pop culture consciousness. They reflect the ways in which the Asian American community continues to become more globally connected.
