The Grace Lee Project
I think the most distinguishable way in which "the road" was used and differed in the films Searching for Angela Shelton and The Grace Lee Project is in terms of broadness. Angela Shelton's film starts out with a very broad goal, the road being a place on which we're not sure what is to come, and some of the people have the theme in common, while others simply share a name. The film then narrows as we see less growth and more repetition of theme, as well as a narrowing goal that ends up being a self-healing trip. Grace Lee takes a different turn in that her film starts out very narrowly and moves out to a broader vision as the film progresses. This seems very intentional. Lee has qualms about the connotations that come along with her name. Rightfully so, as she presents many examples of who 'Grace Lee' is to people that know someone with the name. She goes on the hunt with a very narrow classification of what she is looking for and expecting, but we can see as an audience that this will not be the end result, and Lee obviously suspects as much.
Lee's road is "raced" in that she is tracking down not only a certain race, but she is following the preconceived notion that these women of this particular race also fit into many other categories together. As the film broadens, we see examples that diminish this stereotype. Lee encounters women of all careers, life experiences, locations, and lifestyles. Even when presented with a Grace Lee that does, indeed, fit the stereotype the film began with, her encounters with these women show us that the little intricacies of individuals and their experiences completely throw overbearing generalizations out the window. In comparison, Angela Shelton does little to use the road as a tool to show individual differences, but her goal is more to unite women under a common thread of experience. As a goal, this works, but her road is much more of a string on uniting and grouping together, while Grace Lee's road unites at the same time as separating as a means to show individuality. Hence, the narrow to broad notion, versus the broad to narrow notion.