New Books Network Beenash Jafri, "Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Dec 23, 2025
Beenash Jafri, an Associate Professor at UC Davis, delves into her groundbreaking work on Asian diasporic film and its ties to settler colonialism. She explores how films can illuminate the complexities of Asian-Indigenous relationships, using the cowboy figure as a lens to critique erasure and reframe narratives. Jafri emphasizes the importance of friendship as a political practice among marginalized communities and imagines decolonial futures through sensory engagement. Her insights challenge traditional film studies, encouraging a rethinking of solidarity and kinship.
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Multicultural Coalitions Can Mask Indigeneity
- Multiracial coalitional frameworks can obscure distinct Indigenous political histories and relations to the state.
- Centering Indigeneity reshapes how we read diasporic attachments to settler nations.
Film Reveals Desires Social Science Misses
- Film opens speculative spaces that social movement analysis alone may not reveal.
- Films expose both imaginative decolonial possibilities and persistent settler attachments.
The Asian Cowboy As Entry Point
- The cowboy figure served as Jafri's dissertation entry point into diasporic settler imaginaries.
- She finds many Asian cowboy films erase Indigenous presence while reproducing longing for settler belonging.