Queer Sinophone Cultures by Howard Chiang

Queer Sinophone Cultures by Howard Chiang

The Sinophone framework emphasises the diversity of Chinese-speaking communities and cultures, and seeks to move beyond a binary model of China and the West. Indeed, this strikingly resembles attempts within the queer studies movement to challenge the dimorphisms of sex and gender.

Bringing together two areas of study that tend to be marginalised within their home disciplines Queer Sinophone Cultures innovatively advances both Sinophone studies and queer studies. It not only examines film and literature from Mainland China but expands its scope to encompass the underrepresented ‘Sinophone’ world at large (in this case Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and beyond). Further, where queer studies in the U.S., Europe, and Australia often ignore non-Western cultural phenomena, this book focuses squarely on Sinophone queerness, providing fresh critical analyses of a range of topics from works by the famous director Tsai Ming-Liang to the history of same-sex soft-core pornography made by the renowned Shaw Brothers Studios.

By instigating a dialogue between Sinophone studies and queer studies, this book will have broad appeal to students and scholars of modern and contemporary China studies, particularly to those interested in film, literature, media, and performance. It will also be of great interest to those interested in queer studies more broadly.

This provocative collection seeks to exfoliate the layers that have bundled Chinese Studies within the strictures of traditional area studiesLooking to transnational routes and roots, the contributors elegantly deploy a "queer Sinophonic" framework that refuses geographic and conceptual limits to understanding the conjunctions and intersections of wayward bodies, intimacies, and attachments as these are produced in film, literature and other cultural genres. Traipsing various sites and contexts of the Sinophone world, from Singapore to Hong Kong to Taiwan and beyond, the essays in this expansive collection de-essentialize Chineseness and queer by circumventing the traps and tribulations of antipodal dualities such as China and its diasporas.

Martin F. Manalansan IV, Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora

This impressive anthology brings queer theory and Sinophone studies into a critically challenging and mutually transformative conjuncture. Showcasing an eclectic range of scholarship that is historically nuanced, theoretically adventurous and globally aware, the book demonstrates that the vital projects to, respectively, "deprovincialize china" and "reroute the geopolitics of desire" not only go hand in hand but inform each other in the most thoughtful and provocative way. This book stands at the forefront of a vibrant new field and should be read by anyone who is interested in pushing the boundaries of sexuality studies and Asian studies.

Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Undercurrents: Queer Culture and Postcolonial Hong Kong

Howard Chiang is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick, UK.

Ari Larissa Heinrich is Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, USA.