A True Goodbye: A Critical Approach to The Farewell

The Farewell (2019) by director Lulu Wang is a tale based “on an actual lie” but displays the beautiful truths of human nature. The storytelling follows Billi (Awkwafina) and her family as they discover that her grandmother, Nai Nai, is dying. They return to China under the guise of a wedding, but in reality, it is a final goodbye because the family decides to keep Nai Nai’s condition a secret. Billi deals with the internal struggle between her Westernized morals and her family’s Eastern principles. Contrary to many “prominent” depictions of Asian and Asian Americans, this movie sparingly touches on its characters’ generational differences. Instead, the primary focus of the film is differing moral standpoints and contrasting cultural experiences. The Farewell displays the heterogeneity within an often homogeneously perceived community. I maintain that the Farewell is best analyzed in contrast to Lisa Lowe’s Immigrant Acts and the topic of “heterogeneity” and the term “racialization” from Natalia Molina and Daniel Martinez HoSang’s Relational Formations of Race. Heterogeneity is a way of thinking about differences across diverse communities of people. Racialization is the process of instilling a person with a consciousness of race distinctions or giving racial character to someone. Through heterogeneity and racialization, The Farewell allows viewers to understand the cultural…