Dream Chasers: Representations of Children and Success in Asia

Dream Chasers: Representations of Children and Success in Asia. Edited by: Shih-wen Sue Chen and Sin Wen Lau. New York and London: Routledge, 2023. x + 255 pages.

Representations of Children and Success in Asia is a part of Routledge’s Children’s Literature and Culture series. This edited volume explores the notion of success and how it is conceptualised and represented for children in different Asian countries through literature, cinema, and popular media. It also examines how success relates to education, family, gender, race, class, community, and the nation. The book opens with a very informative introduction written by the editors, Shih-wen Sue Chen and Sin Wen Lau, who offer a definition of 'success' for children in Asia. On the one hand, they confront it with the West, and on the other, they present the West's perception of Asian success.

Part One, ‘Educational Success’, contains three chapters that explore the immense pressure that parents, teachers, and young people experience in order to achieve success in education. Researchers argue how being successful is narrowly defined as being well-educated in India, Japan, and South Korea, where both – educational institutions and families – put tremendous stress on children to gain admission into the most prestigious schools and universities. This chapter is critical of the weaponization of success in education and serves as a call to provide and ensure a healthy childhood for students, whose existence under this kind of pressure negatively affects their mental, physical, and emotional health. Sambhabi Ghosh in Chapter Two examines the realist television drama SKY Castle (2018) and Assassination Classroom (2015–2016), an animated series set in a fantasy world, to reflect on the dehumanisation of individuals whose main purpose in life is their educational success. In Chapter Three, Kelly Hansen analyses the satirical film The Family Game (1983) and its 2013 television remake, in which success for middle-class families is defined by not failing in the Japanese exam system, known there as “exam hell” (shiken jigoku). In Chapter Four, Rizia Begum Laskar analyses Chetan Bhagat’s novel Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT (2004), which concerns the highly competitive Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), as well as the film adaptation of the book, Three Idiots (2009). Hansen uses these texts to question Indian conceptions of the ‘successful life’, which requires that children excel in science and math through hard work in order to (supposedly) lead to adult careers in engineering.

Part Two, ‘Cultural Politics of Success’, looks at how political economy, class, and gender shape ideas of success for children. In Chapter Five, Ying Zou discusses three book series: Ma Liang and The Magic Paintbrush (1956), A Cheng’s Turtle (1983), and the Jia Li and Jia Mei (1993). This diachronic analysis underscores key moments in Chinese modern history that the author argues have changed attitudes towards money, the main symbol of success in China. In Chapter Six, Shriya Kuchibhotla reads Trash! On Ragpicker Children and Recycling (2003) and Dear Mrs. Naidu (2015) to examine how Indian notions of success can be shaped by social status defined by class and caste differences. Both texts describe the lives of children from economically disadvantaged groups. The former advocates for street children to have access to better education by highlighting the important work they do as ragpickers and their role in helping the environment. The latter presents a romanticised view of life in the urban slums that, despite terrible housing conditions, demonstrates strong community bonds. In Chapter Seven, Shih-Wen Sue Chen and Sin Wen Lau analyse three Singaporean films directed by Jack Neo, I Not Stupid (2002), I Not Stupid Too (2006), and We Not Naughty (2012), arguing that the way they depict females sheds light on how success is gendered and how the same personality traits that are believed to lead to success are encouraged in boys and subjugated in girls. Rather, the latter are often depicted as needing to sacrifice their personal ambitions and give up their careers in order to become better house keepers, wives, and mothers.

Part Three, ‘Success and the Nation’, defines success as a contribution to the national good as a vital element of becoming ideal citizens. In Chapter Eight, Yi Ren relies on archival documents and oral resources to analyse the success of Red Children, a nationally known model propaganda team that was active during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Ren argues that Red Children collaborated with state initiatives that were structured hierarchically and emphasized childlike purity while displaying political maturity. In Chapter Nine, Nia Nafisah presents three Indonesian films, Surau and Silek (2017), Little Chefs (2018), and The Adventure of Catching the Thunderbolts (2018), arguing that Indonesian definitions of success position spiritual achievement as more important than material gains. According to these films, the recipe for success is believed to lie in the balance between traditional and modern values and in maintaining a harmonious relationship with one’s community and it can be achieved when one is open-minded and resourceful. In Chapter Ten, Satrya Wibawa focuses on Indonesia and national identity by analysing two modern films Aku Ingin Menciummu Sekali Saja [I Want to Kiss You Just Once] (2002), and Denias Senandung di Atas Awan [Denias Singing on the Clouds] (2006), unpacking the politics of race, religion, and the othering of the Papuan people by the rest of Indonesia. Wibawa contends that the only way to be successful for Papuan people is by becoming civilized Indonesian through formal education. In Chapter Eleven, Agnes Tang and Ivy Haoyin Hsieh focus on evaluating ten bestselling picturebooks in Taiwan, which parents buy for their children. The authors conduct critical content analysis to determine whether the picturebooks’ messages of success align with the core competencies identified by the Ministry of Education, finding that parents prefer books that focus on numerical skills and practical information rather than texts read for pleasure.

Part Four, ‘Success in the World’, discusses different aspects of success that support the attainment of sustainable and prosperous futures in a globalizing world. In Chapter Twelve, Fengxia Tan and Claudia Nelson analyse Chinese films The Ozone Layer Vanishes (1990) and The Wandering Earth (2019) with reference to the concept of ‘ecoagency’, that is, being aware and concerned about global ecological problems, demonstrating the way young people in the People’s Republic of China respond to global climate change. The authors argue that in these movies, the achievement of success by the protagonists as ideal citizens of the future is preceded by their promotion of collective ecological action. In Chapter Thirteen, Katsuya Izumi constructs the image of a new teenage ‘impersonal’ hero by analysing protagonists of several Japanese movies by Makoto Shinkai. He defines the impersonality of these characters as a state of emptying oneself in order to become a medium for others’ agencies and voices. That action connects teenagers to the Japanese religious tradition of Shintoism, which helps them succeed in overcoming feelings of emptiness and loss in order to successfully create a new future. In Chapter Fourteen, Catherine Earl analyses the influence of reading both translated literature and traditional Vietnamese folktales on reshaping Vietnamese middle-class sensibilities into ‘glocal’, that is, both global and local at the same time. In Chapter Fifteen, Jennifer M. Graff and Eun Young Yeom analyse one hundred picturebooks in order to explore how children’s texts shape social success for a child in South Korea. Based on their findings, they argue that the books propagate the idea of success as speaking American English and living a middle-class lifestyle. They also argue that at the same time the books suggest that social success is achieved through the mainstream Korean value of collectivism rather than through American individualism. Therefore, South Korean definition of success speaks to tensions in national identity.

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 intercultural researchers.

Joanna Karmasz

University of Warsaw