Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T18:35:13.098Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Trans Feminism, Asian America’s Queer Exception?

from Part II - Intersections, Intimacies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2021

Betsy Huang
Affiliation:
Clark University, Massachusetts
Victor Román Mendoza
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Get access

Summary

An Asian American trans imaginary unfolds in the writing of Ryka Aoki, Kim Fu, Vivek Shraya, and others who are redefining the trans literary canon’s primary relationship to the life-writing genre and the twentieth-century memoirs by white authors that are among its foundational texts. This literary unfolding is aided by cisgender or non-trans authors, such as Fu, who use cross-gender narratives as vehicles for exploring the intersection of racialization and gendering, or pursuing new approaches to the impasses of our sexual politics. That the racist gaze can confer gender or even misgender people of color is the basis of David L. Eng’s theory of racial castration, according to which Asian Americans are rendered “queer as such.” At a time when differences between “queer” and “trans” are increasingly being elaborated while trans murder rates keep rising, the emergence of Asian American trans literature therefore begs an important question about this intellectual genealogy: Can an Asian Americanist critique that is “queer as such” also be called trans feminist? Drawing on feminist psychoanalytical criticism, this chapter reads Asian American, Hawaiian, and Asian Canadian trans narratives that subvert the disciplining force of gender misrecognition to produce a queer, trans feminist analysis of anti-Asian racism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×