Asian American Sexualities

by Russell Leong (Editor)

Asian American Sexualities works to dispel the stereotype of oriental sexual decadence, as well as the "model minority" heterosexual Asian sterotype in the US.



Writing from an impressive array of interdisciplinary perspectives, the contributors discuss a variety of topics, including sexuality and identity politics; community activism and gay activism; transnational aspects of love between women in Thailand; queer South Asian culture in the US; gay and lesbian filmmakers; same-sex sexuality in Pacific literature; and Asian American male homosexuality and AIDS. The relationship of the gay and lesbian experience to Asian American studies and Ethnic Studies is also explored.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Gender, Queer, Asian American

262 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 1995

Reviews

[Chloe]

3.5 stars

Shoutout to whoever left this gem of a book at the Little Free Library in Boston's Downtown Crossing! I was thrilled to walk out of work this summer to find that somebody left this behind for a lucky someone (me!) to pick up. I can't imagine who would discard a book like this, but that's not for me to really question, I guess.

Like any collection of essays, this was full of hits and misses, although I'd say that it was a worthy read, even with some misses (that essay on M. Butterfly was ridiculously long and I think that the in-depth analysis ill-suited for a fictionalized play, since at the end of the day, whatever characters say or do is less indicative of historical facts about cultural approaches to gender and sexuality and just based upon the whims of the author). Some of the essays are also outdated - there's one by Daniel C. Tsang about internet chat boards as a place of community that's pretty hilarious in the age of Grinder (he speaks of the dangers of having a stranger "download" your information). The author mentions how he never goes to gay bars anymore since he finds all his hook-ups online, and in the 2010s that's a crying shame, since we don't have gay bars anymore - partly thanks to this very phenomenon that this intrepid internet explorer writes about! But the outdated essays still serve as a valuable look into Asian American LGBTQ culture in the mid-90s, and only make me wish we had a similar collection of essays published in the late aughts or 2010s.

I also particularly enjoyed a short chapter by Alice Y. Hom summarizing interviews with parents of gay and lesbian children, and I thought that could easily have been a much longer and in-depth article! And for fiction (of which there's only the tiniest smattering in this book), I really loved Andrew Lam's fictional short, "Grandma's Tales" - it was surreal in the most beautiful way, and strongly reminded me of Kelly Link (who I adore).

[el]

"Queer Pilipino Rebolusiyon with ms. nikki giovanni to thank for"
by Joël B. Tan

yesterday
on live television
prime time
mr. newsman asked me
who i thought our
great white hope
was for this election year and
i said, ”this
colored
queer
don’t
have a hope to drop-dead on”

i called for
rebolusiyon
cause i got
real tired of asking
real nice like
for our human rights
and i figure what would it
matter anyway,
since they don’t
listen to queers
or coloreds
unless they get
downright
aggressive
and mean
and use big words like
rebolusiyon

all of a sudden
they get these
malnutritioned visions of apocalypse
in their minds about
killin’ people and burnin’ shit up.
rebolusiyon is a big smart
benevolent
word
that involves more than violence

rebolusiyon
starts with the mind
and the self
like bright yellow
knowledge imploding in your brain
merging with your deep
deepest
soul-part
then coming out your mouth
out your hands
out your private parts
and falling dead smack in the middle of your
heart.

so you see
rebolusiyon ain’t scary.
uh-uh, in fact,
rebolusiyon
is a freeing,
mango-juicy
dope
fat, fresh, fly
liberating
emancipating
ejaculating
gyrating
titillating
bootie-grooving
earth moving
this is the dawning of the age of aquarius
love thang
wrapped up in a whole lot of
historical
common sense.

word.

funny thing is since
i look like a monkey in suits
and t.v. only gives you
five seconds to speak your peace
i thought that rebolusiyon was
like
offering the world
a one-word
poem.

- October 1992