"Not 'that' Grace Lee"
In her film, The Grace Lee Project, filmmaker Grace Lee goes on a journey to find other Grace Lees in the US (specifically California) and even globally, as evident in the inclusion of a lesbian Grace Lee in Korea, to find out what makes them and herself unique from all of the other Grace Lees. By making contact with these women, both online and in person, the film maker begins to get an idea of what all of these women seemingly have in common: smart, quiet, passive, nice, etc. These are all qualities that are seen as stereotypical of Asian women. But another commonality of these women are that many of the women interviewed believe themselves to not actually personify these qualities; they instead see them as something that the other Grace Lees possess.
Grace Lee the film maker goes in search of the women that are the anomalies to these stereotypes. Most of the time when she finds these women (the girl who tries to set her school on fire, the lesbian activist) she is later let down to find out that they really do seem to fit the stereotypes (the high school student was embarrassed about her academic record; the lesbian later renounces her sexuality and requests to be excluded from the film to protect her family). Although these two women do seem to only reinforce the Asian women stereotypes, I believe that they exhibit unstereotypical characteristics of Asian women. In both of their cases, it took them strength, initiative, and courage to do what they did, particularly in the case of the lesbian for coming out and being such an activist. These characteristics are hardly ever attributed to Asian women, so I believe that they help break down such stereotypes and may give the film maker a greater belief that not all Grace Lees are the same.