Narratives of Success as Claims to Belonging: Always Be My Maybe (2019) and Minari (2020)

Abstract: This essay examines narratives of success within two Asian American-directed films that saw mainstream recognition in the wake of Crazy Rich Asians (2018): Always Be My Maybe (2019) and Minari (2020). Specifically, I focus on how these two films present conflicts over the meaning of success, and ultimately what compromises, either with the self or with personal relationships, must be made in its pursuit. I argue that these films balance the need to frame Asian Americans through cultural difference to achieve mainstream legibility with desire to inhabit a racially neutral space. In doing so, these films frame their protagonists in opposition to ideas of whiteness as American culture but embrace the privileges of incorporation into neoliberal capitalist and imperial frameworks, inheriting imagery and positions of power traditionally dominated by whites. In attempting to center Asian American experience in their imaginaries, these films rely instead on Asian American participation in projects of neoliberal, American capital to be read as universal and thus racially neutral.