1st Edition
Representations of Children and Success in Asia Dream Chasers
This edited volume explores how success is conceptualized and represented in texts for young people in Asia. The essays in this collection examine how success for children relates to education, family, gender, race, class, community, and the nation. It answers the following questions: How is success for children represented in literature, cinema, and popular media? In what ways are these images grounded in the historical, political, and cultural contexts in which they are produced and consumed? How does childhood agency influence ideas about success in Asia? Highlighting the similarities and differences in how success is defined for children and young adults in Japan, South Korea, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India, this volume argues that success is an important keyword in the literary and cultural study of childhood in Asia.
Chapter 1: Dreams of Success: Young People, Agency, Values, and Citizenship in Asia
Shih-Wen Sue Chen and Sin Wen Lau
I. Educational Success
Chapter 2: The Grace in Failings: Reading Failure as Success in SKY Castle and Assassination Classroom
Sambhabi Ghosh
Chapter 3: Success at Any Price: Exam Hell and Morita Yoshimitsu’s The Family Game
Kelly Hansen
Chapter 4: Unfulfilled Dreams of IIT: Notions of Success in Five Point Someone and 3 Idiots
Rizia Begum Laskar
II. Cultural Politics of Success
Chapter 5: Representations of Money and Success in Contemporary Chinese Children’s Literature
Ying Zou
Chapter 6: Hope, Oppression, and the Indian Urban Poor: Portrayals of Success in Trash! and Dear Mrs. Naidu
Shriya Kuchibhotla
Chapter 7: Disappearing Girls: Gendered Success and the Reproduction of the Singapore Family in Jack Neo’s Films
Shih-Wen Sue Chen and Sin Wen Lau
III. Success and the Nation
Chapter 8: To Be Red: Child Propagandists and Their Success in the Cultural Revolution
Yi Ren
Chapter 9: Reaching for the Stars: Identity and Success in Three Indonesian Children’s Films
Nia Nafisah
Chapter 10: Becoming Indonesian: Political Constructions of Successful Children in Aku Ingin Menciummu Sekali Saja and Denias Senandung di Atas Awan
Satrya Wibawa
Chapter 11: Messages of "Success" in Popular Taiwanese Children’s Books
Agnes Tang and Ivy Haoyin Hsieh
IV. Success in the World
Chapter 12: Youth Ecoagency in Two Chinese Science Fiction Films on Environmental Disasters
Fengxia Tan and Claudia Nelson
Chapter 13: Saviors of the World: Impersonality and Success in Shinkai Makoto’s Animated Films
Katsuya Izumi
Chapter 14: Cultivating Dreams: Becoming Middle-class and Affluent in Globalizing Urban Vietnam
Catherine Earl
Chapter 15: Semiotic Representations of Success in English-Language Picturebooks for Young Korean Children
Jennifer M. Graff and Eun Young Yeom
Biography
Shih-Wen Sue Chen (PhD, ANU) is an Associate Professor in Writing and Literature at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.
Sin Wen Lau (PhD, ANU) is Senior Lecturer in the Chinese Program at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
