Queer Literature in the Sinosphere: A Review

Queer Literature in the Sinosphere is the most up-to-date English-language study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) themed literature and culture in the Chinese-speaking world. From classical homoerotic texts to contemporary boys’ love fan fiction, this book showcases the richness and diversity of queer Chinese literature across the full spectrum of genres, styles, topics and cultural politics. The book features authors and literary works from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the global Chinese diaspora. Featuring chapters by leading scholars from around the world, this book rewrites literature, history and culture from a queer lens in China and globally. 

Queer developments and literature must be understood within the intersectional context of their cultures of origin, especially when of non-Western provenance. My experiences of writing Chinese cultures in the Anglosphere and studies in Sinology have kept me acutely aware of the U.S. and Euro-centrism of past East Asian studies. So I was delighted to receive a review copy of this essay collection from Professor Bao. The editors’ assertion in the Introduction of their aim to “open up transnational and transcultural dialogues vis-à-vis queer literature”, confirmed the promising potential suggested by the title of the collection, to recentre the focus on the interflow of ideas and sociocultural interactions between regions within the Sinosphere. Staying faithful to the broader significance of queer worlding, Hongwei Bao and Yahia Zhengtang Ma also set out the parameters of their curation across the wide range of genders, sexualities, interrelations and vantage points that “queer” denotes; their intention to transcend boundaries between literary and popular, print and digital, and incorporate a broad range of disciplines as well as scholarly approaches. The brief history of Sinophone queer literature and literary theory before the overview, provides an accessible primer, especially for those unfamiliar with the subject, before they dive into the in-depth examinations of particularly texts and areas of investigation.

I found the first half of the collection a fascinating window into the nature, roots and foundations of Sinophone queer literature. Whilst temporality is frequently employed in today’s historically set romances, a legacy from dynastic fiction, to suggest a prior connection between the love interests, for instance, an entanglement in a previous life cycle, the significance it bears amplifies in a queer literary context. Reading Aixia Huang’s essay on Ming Qing male homoerotic literature, we come to understand the roots of the dynamics in danmei fiction such as Modao Zushi, where one partner in the relationship willingly feminises themselves to order to sustain an intimate relationship with their lover. Whereas upward social aspirations are commonly part of such characters’ motivations in Qing literature, the socially disadvantaged character (Wei Wuxian), also a self-made powerful overload, willingly giving this up in MXTX’s novel, is an innovative step related to contemporary sociopolitical and gender horizons. In terms of lesbian explorations, more visible iterations from the early 20th century, signify not only queer expressionism but new definitions of love, relationship paradigms and identities established and determined by women, rather the patriarchal orthodoxy of heteronormative society, as demonstrated by Yixin Liu’s essay on lesbian fiction by women in the 1920s. Interestingly, the ideal space of spiritual freedom and intimate bonding between the five female characters, created by Lu Yin in her story, Old Friends by the Seashore, can be seen reborn in numerous contemporary female written novels and screen works such as Kong Liu’s novel Blossoms in Hardship and Kill My Sins by scriptwriter Zhou Azi, that do not necessarily define themselves as queer fiction.

Dylan K. Wang’s discussion on Ding Xilin and Bajin sheds light on the under-investigated history of female impersonation in dynastic China and the rare model of queer kinship found in the latter’s Second Mother. And Jamie J. Zhao’s essay on fanfiction offers a much-needed examination of baihe literature, which I have long felt is underexplored. The unconventional forms of intimacy represented in the writings of the author known as CO521, articulate, on a wider basis, the need for queer people of all persuasions to engage in and create alternative paradigms of love and sexual relations as means of self-expression, detached from the existing conventions of the conforming heteronormativity. Yahia Ma’s comparative close reading of passages from the original text of Jin Xing’s autobiography and its English version is eye-opening on how the highly adaptative translation has repositioned this trans icon in the global queer discourse. This affirms my own creative decisions as a translator who values faithfulness to authorial intention, quality of expression and respects cultural heterogeneity.

The third part of the collection looks at queer discourses via the intersectional areas of region, health, class and non-human perspectives.  Carlos Rojas’ essay on one of the most important Sinophone contemporary queer writers Chiu Miao-Chin, reveals the just-as-key mutual interexchange of ideas and theories between regions within the Sinosphere, such as China and Taiwan, (alongside interactions with the West) in the development of Asian queer activism. Whilst I found Rebecca Ehrenwirth’s investigation of Mu Cao’s multiple narrative perspectives profound and Sophia Huei-Ling Chen’s discussion of Chen Xue’s subversion of Taiwan’s economic miracle engrossing, I was excited to read Liang Ge’s exploration of queer and post-human futures in the web novel Little Mushroom. As a curator and writer who focusses on contemporary Chinese genre fiction, I believe that internet literature and genre fiction are important literary spaces in which writers grapple with many latent issues, which have recently been emerging.

The perspectives on homosexuality in Australian Sinophone fiction and queer Singaporean Chinese theatre open up yet more new facets of queer literary discourse. Hongwei Bao and Hanping Xu’s conversations with two of the pioneers in queer Sinosphere, Cui Zi’En and Howard Chiang completes the collection, wrapping it up by switching to a more casual format, contemplating authorship and the futures of queer literature. Whilst bisexuality crops up in some of the pieces feature, I would have liked to see a couple of works centring this orientation, it being not the most visible of queer identities and one that has historically suffered an ambivalence of attitudes. That said, I am aware that an anthology must have parameters, points of focus, and it would be impossible to include every single persuasion, asexual, agender and so forth, without needing more pages than a single book can hold. There is certainly space for more volumes on this topic.

As I flick over the last page of this book, I feel somewhat like a renewed person. One that now fully understands my literary and creative perspectives have always been queer, even before I came to terms with my own orientations, and or during the time I quietly lived a queer life before coming out and being more activist as an author under this identity. As a translator, I am not only translating literature and cultures, but opening up new epistemological spaces for these works. Being queer isn’t just to do with one’s choices of intimate relations, but seeing the world and participating in it in different ways, reading and thinking about it, seeking alternatives when the need for improvement arises. This collection has my high recommendations. It has been invaluable background research for the Chinese queer anthology I’m currently curating.

 

 

 

 


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