Roseanne Liang's documentary Banana in a Nutshell tells the story of her romance with Stephen Harris. After falling in love at university, everything seemed perfect for the pair. Enter Liang’s traditional Chinese parents, and suddenly the prospect of her marriage to a Pākehā got a lot more complicated. In this excerpt, Liang guides viewers through her childhood, romance, and threatened disownment by her parents. Liang added an extended epilogue when her award-winning film hit DVD. The couple's story was later fictionalised for Liang’s 2011 feature My Wedding and Other Secrets.
The slang definition of ‘Banana’ is ‘an Asian who has been brought up in Western society: yellow on the outside, white on the inside’. Well, that’s me. And this is my story, in a nutshell.– Director Roseanne Liang, in the catalogue for the 2005 NZ International Film Festival
Roseanne Liang
Roseanne Liang
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