1st Edition

Representations of Children and Success in Asia Dream Chasers

Edited By Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Sin Wen Lau Copyright 2023
276 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

276 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

276 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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... Read more

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.

"Representations of Children and Success in Asia is a remarkable collection of essays. All the essays carefully address and argue the unique constructions of childhood and success in Asia by accounting for the historical, political, and religious or philosophical bases. It provides both a much-needed background for scholars who are unfamiliar with Asian children’s texts and a foundation for deeper discussion among scholars from the regions. It is indeed a successful collection of study on success."

--Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang, Malmö University

“All the chapters of this book present an interesting and multifaceted approach to success, which is often situated as the expression of adult desire and their uncompromising expectation towards the behaviors and goals of children and young people. By offering an impressive cross section of the complex ways in which success is conceptualised in Asian cultures through the materials of children’s culture, this volume will interest educators, parents, and cultural researchers.”

--Joanna Karmasz, University of Warsaw