This essay explores Tino Villanueva’s narrative poem Scene from the Movie GIANT (1993) by attending to the affective turn taken in literary studies. It traces how the embodied emotions and the affective flows charted by the poetic voice foster collective self-affirmation for Chicana/o identities and affectively mobilize readers to oppose racism. The poetic persona, Villanueva’s fourteen-year-old self, is emotionally struck by a particular scene of the classic 1956 Hollywood movie GIANT, in which three Mexican American characters are denied access to a road-side Texan café. Villanueva conveys to readers the young persona’s embodied and affective responses to the racist incident projected on screen, underlining how the scene wounded the boy’s self-image and sense of belonging. Readers are invited to reinterpret the movie scene from the perspective of racialized Chicana/o identities and acknowledge racism as a recurring collective experience that has impacted different generations of Mexican Americans. The poem foregrounds the transitory and socially inflected dimensions of affect, as Villanueva’s redemptive act of sharing the painful experiences of racism with his reading audience transforms these deprecating emotions into feelings of self-appreciation, while fostering readers’ empathy and renewed energy to indict discrimination and racial boundaries.