My America . . . or Honk If You Love Buddha
1h 30m
Directed by Renee Tajima-Peña • 1997 • United States
Starring Renee Tajima-Peña, Victor Wong
Intoxicating and irreverent, Renee Tajima-Peña’s award-winning documentary takes inspiration from Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” recapturing the novel’s spirit in a fresh and different journey through a new American subculture. In MY AMERICA, the filmmaker recalls her childhood back in the days when her vacationing family would cross five state lines without ever catching a glimpse of another Asian face. Returning to the road more than twenty years later, she finds that new immigration has suddenly put Asian Americans on the map. Tajima-Peña sets out to search for the new American identity that will arise from the multi-culti hoi polloi that is America at the end of the twentieth century.