Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Zhuoyi Wang recently published an article in Caesura: Journal of Philological & Humanistic Studies (Volume 12, Issue 2, 2025), titled “Raunchy and (Un)Rooted Queering Transnational Asian American Cinema in Joy Ride (2023).”
In this article, Wang argues that Joy Ride (2023) stages distinctly Asian American experiences of racialization, belonging, and cultural expectation by colliding the root-seeking melodrama with Hollywood raunchy comedy.
Drawing on theorists such as Sianne Ngai, Sara Ahmed, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Gayatri Gopinath, and Martin Manalansan, the article traces how the film registers low-intensity affects of misfit, anxiety, and resentment that often structure Asian American life, then turns to hypersexual performance and queer diasporic attachment to imagine a livable home in motion, without promising genealogical clarity or emotional completion.
Posted March 10, 2026
