What about my name...?
Grace Lee (the filmmaker) effectively uses the road to deconstruct the stereotype that surrounds Asian women in the United States in her film, The Grace Lee Project. I feel that she does this by first establishing the stereotype (smart, quiet, blends in), which ends up taking up quite a bit of the film. After establishing the key characteristics of Grace Lees’ – or the common characteristics of all Asian American women – she can then move forward with the film and show distinct Grace Lees’ who break the mold and are changing the world around them. These women demonstrate that the box society gives Asian women can be broken out of, but sadly, not many do because of the strict social norms. Grace’s disappointment is shown when she discovers that the Grace Lee based in Seoul ends up giving up her groundbreaking work because of its social implications. In the end though, Grace proves her point: each of us is different and breaks the mold in our own way, but society should take some pressure off Asian women to act in a certain manner.
I believe Grace brings home a better sense of self from the road – similarly to Angela Shelton. Though Grace did not go searching for a particular “missing piece� of herself, she managed to get a better idea of who she was and where she was going by listening to these women’s stories and drawing on them for inspiration in her own life. Grace was saying that Grace Lee’s are each powerful, successful women in their own way – whether that is a loving mother and wife or a public figure, like the television reporter. She also suggests that Grace Lees do not identify themselves the same way that others do. Many of the women did not first identify themselves by their race or other characteristics given to them by the people interviewed on the street, though they were often proud of their heritage. Grace Lee Boggs explicitly states that she identifies people by what they do, not by their race or gender, which made her an integral part of the Black Power Movement.