Queering the Asian Diaspora
East and Southeast Asian Sexuality, Identity and Cultural Politics
- Hongwei Bao - University of Nottingham, UK, University of Nottingham
"An electrifying archive of queer cultural productions... These radical and minor transnational artistic practices by East and Southeast Asian queer diasporic cultural producers emerge in new light through Bao’s brilliant theoretical insights." - Alvin K. Wong, author of Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone
The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified global geopolitical tensions, bringing Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism into sharp focus. At the same time, a growing Asian diasporic consciousness is emerging worldwide, celebrating Asian identity and cultural heritage. Yet, in the space between anti-Asian racism and the rise of Asian advocacy, the voices of queer people have often been largely missing.
This book addresses that gap. Exploring a range of contemporary case studies from art, fashion, performance, film, and political activism, Bao offers a powerful intersectional cultural politics—anti-nationalist, anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, and queer—that challenges dominant narratives and amplifies marginalized voices.
The Social Science for Social Justice series challenges the Ivory Tower of academia, providing a platform for academics, journalists, and activists of color to respond to pressing social issues.
Supplements
In this video, Hongwei Bao explores how queerness reshapes Asian diasporic identity through art, activism, and cultural critique amid rising anti-Asian sentiment.
Queering the Asian Diaspora by Hongwei Bao is an intellectually engaging book that makes timely interventions to the fields of diaspora studies, queer theory, and transnational studies. It invites the reader into an electrifying archive of queer cultural productions ranging from fashion photography, experimental drag performance, queer weddings, queer curation, digital film and media, and artistic conjuring of a queer Bandung internationalism. These radical and minor transnational artistic practices by East and Southeast Asian queer diasporic cultural producers emerge in new light through Bao’s brilliant theoretical insights.
‘Hongwei Bao rejects both the cultural essentialism that often underpins mainstream Asian politics and the narrow identitarian frameworks of Western queer discourse. By bringing diasporic Asia into critical dialogue with queer theory, his argument disrupts normative assumptions about belonging, intimacy, and political solidarity.
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This book thus strives to problematise the notion of ‘Asian diaspora’ itself, unsettling familiar narratives and opening conceptual space for alternative imaginings of ‘Asianness’ and queerness more attuned to fluidity, contradiction, and transformation.’
Spanning art, film, digital media, fashion photography, and performance from the first quarter of the century, this book explores the ways that queer artists and activists from various diasporic populations mobilise cultural production to form identities, create communities, and intervene politically. Hongwei Bao rejects both the cultural essentialism that often underpins mainstream Asian politics and the narrow identitarian frameworks of Western queer discourse. By bringing diasporic Asia into critical dialogue with queer theory, his argument disrupts normative assumptions about belonging, intimacy, and political solidarity. As a result, Bao is able to advance a form of queer Asian diasporic politics that is post-identitarian, intersectional, and transversal - one that reimagines belonging across shifting borders, entangled histories, and asymmetrical power structures.
