Description
Book SynopsisLily Wong studies the transpacific mobility and mobilization of the sex worker figure, illuminating the intersectional politics of racial, sexual, and class structures.
Transpacific Attachments examines shifting depictions of Chinese sex workers in popular media from the early twentieth century to the present.
Trade ReviewI find this book engaging, inspiring, and thought-provoking. The book’s greatest accomplishments are its transpacific perspective, the focus on the subject of the sex worker, and its various theoretical approaches to lesser-known works across a broad historical span. . . . [
Transpacific Attachments] is destined to be an important resource and reference. -- Sijia Yao * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *
This book should be welcomed by scholars in the field of Sinophone studies, Chinese studies, queer studies, and Asian American studies. * China Review International *
Transpacific Attachments effectively infuses Sinophone studies with new theoretical energy by addressing questions of cultural identity and Chineseness through the lens of affect and sexuality. -- Andrea Bachner, Cornell University
An important contribution to transpacific studies, Asian-American studies, and Chinese studies, as well as to scholarship on literature, film, and new media,
Transpacific Attachments insightfully sheds new light on how the prostitute figure has worked as a symbolic medium that both produces and problematizes configurations of sexual citizenship and social mobility. -- Karen Thornber, Harvard University
Transpacific Attachments marshals a dazzling range of literary and audiovisual texts to unpack the figure of the Chinese sex worker and the affective politics this figure refracts. The result is a powerfully refreshing understanding of "Chineseness" as a shifting "affective structure" that defies identity politics with its familiar attachments to nation, ethnicity, and language. -- Yiman Wang, University of California, Santa Cruz
Transpacific Attachments elegantly and deftly traces structures of affect and sociality across the Pacific through the figure of the “Chinese” sex worker throughout the twentieth century. It offers one of the most nuanced discussions of “Chineseness” in English-language scholarship to date, registering its permutations and transformations by linking the two sides of the Pacific in their affective entanglements and disentanglements. It makes an important contribution to the interrelated fields of Sinophone studies, Chinese studies, queer studies, and Asian American studies. -- Shu-mei Shih, University of California, Los Angeles
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation
Introduction: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Transpacific Histories of Affect
Part I. Pacific Crossings in the Early Twentieth Century1. Desiring Across the Pacific: Transnational Contact in Early Twentieth-Century Asian/American Literature
2. Over My Dead Body: Melodramatic Crossings of Anna May Wong and Ruan Lingyu
Part II. Sinophonic Liaisons During the Cold War3. Erotic Liaisons: Sinophonic Queering of the Shaw Brothers’ Chinese Dream
4. Offense to the Ear: Hearing the Sinophonic in Wang Zhenhe’s
Rose, Rose, I Love YouPart III. Dwelling Desires and the Neoliberal Order5. Dwelling: Affective Labor and Reordered Kinships in
The Fourth Portrait and
Seeking Asian FemaleCoda: What Dwells
Notes
Bibliography
Index
