Hongwei Bao on Queering the Asian Diaspora
In his new book, Queering the Asian Diaspora: East and Southeast Asian Sexuality, Identity and Cultural Politics, the University of Nottingham’s Hongwei Bao takes a proudly multidisciplinary look at queer East and Southeast Asian culture, both as it presents at home and as it presents – and is perceived – in the West and beyond. Reflecting the interests and skills of Bao himself – academically he’s director of Research for the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies at Nottingham and director of the Centre for Critical Theory and Cultural Studies, while creatively he’s a writer of flash fiction and poetry – the book touches on politics and social concerns while embracing contemporary art, fashion, photography, and performance art.
In this video interview, Bao tell Delayna Spencer, commissioning editor for Sage’s Social Science for Social Justice book series, how he conceptualized Queering the Asian Diaspora during the dark days of COVID. “We saw a surge of anti-Asian racism in the West globally. At the same time we saw Asian communities really actively organizing and voicing their opinions, at the same time discussing issues about what is Asian identity and how would Asian diasporic identity look like.”
Born in Shaanxi, China and raised in Inner Mongolia, Bao studied in Australia before teaching in China, Germany and the United Kingdom (where he’s lived since 2011), giving him first-hand experiences to ground his academic observations at being queer, being Asian and being a world citizen. He addresses the baggage that these various identities carry, and even how good-faith attempts to create a vocabulary around these identities can be a fraught undertaking. He closes with a discussion of the Rabbit God, a LGBTQ+ deity with one paw in the 17th century and another in modern Asian diaspora culture (including Bao’s own book of poetry, The Passion of the Rabbit God).
In addition to his presence at Nottingham, Bao is a research associate of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, Birmingham School of Art; a guest researcher at Leiden University’s International Institute of Asia Studies; and a guest professor at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. In addition to his creative works, some of his books include 2018’s Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China, 2020’s Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture under Postsocialism; and 2021’s Queer Media in China.
A transcript of the interview appears below the video.
Delayna Spencer: Hello, my name is Delayna Spencer, commissioning editor for the Social Science for Social Justice series. Joining me today is Hongwei Bao, associate professor of media studies and author of Queering the Asian Diaspora, which we’re here to discuss today.
When I was commissioning the next set of books for the series, I was really keen to have a book which captured and celebrated the Asian diasporic consciousness which was merging, and which also pushed against the anti-Asian sentiment that was on the rise in the wake of COVID-19. Hongwei’s book adds to the growing body of work which discusses Asian identity, but also provides a foundational piece on contemporary Asian queer identity.
So, Hongwei, your book is a joyful celebration of queer East and Southeast Asian culture. Can you speak a bit about the need to write it and the voices that you were trying to capture?
Hongwei Bao: Thank you, Delayna, for your wonderful introduction and thanks Sage for publishing the book. The book is the result of my observation as well as activism in the past few years, in particular since the start of the pandemic. We saw a surge of anti-Asian racism in the West globally. At the same time we saw Asian communities really actively organizing and voicing their opinions, at the same time discussing issues about what is Asian identity and how would Asian diasporic identity look like. And a lot of these activisms are at work, as well as discussions, feed into my book called Queering the Asian Diaspora.
Delayna Spencer: Thank you. You speak about feeling. And this is a quote from the book, “an outsider in and out of China.” Can you elaborate on this and how the book has emerged from a liminal space?
Hongwei Bao: Yes. So the three keywords in the title – queer, Asian and diaspora – are three subject positions that are occupied at different times, sometimes intersectionally. So, in China, as a queer person, I didn’t feel very comfortable. I had difficulty coming out to me to even to my parents, to family, to society and so on. At the same time, there was very strong, in a way, patriarchal and heteronormative pressure for all citizens. So all people need to conform to a certain lifestyle, and so on, which I didn’t feel comfortable with. When I left China and came to the UK, I also felt that the Asian diaspora community that I’m familiar with also took homosexuality or queer issues as a taboo issue. A lot of people of the older generation didn’t like to talk about LGBTQ+ issues. They sometimes refuse to acknowledge LGBT issues, seeing queerness as a Western import — it only exists in Western societies. This really bothers me.
At the same time, the LGBTQ communities that in the West, I mean, the UK at least, is very diverse, but at times you can still see practices of racism, in particular the kind of objectification and sexualization of the Asian men and women. So essentially those identities and those interlocking structures became the input impetus for my writing.
Delayna Spencer: Thank you. You talk about the LGBTQIA plus community in the West still kind of having that racism which exists in the global North. And I guess, you know, usually when you think of that community, we think of how progressive it is and how far along it’s come and the things that they’re fighting towards. But can you speak about, I guess, how racism and race insects with that community?
Hongwei Bao: So let me first clarify that the LGBTQ communities in the West, at least in the UK society where I’m living now, is very diverse and people are very friendly and there are a lot of opportunities of raising ethnic minority voices. However, there’s still some way to go. For example, if you turn on a social media app and read peoples’ profiles or social media messages, for example, they sometimes still put words such as “no Asian” and “no blacks.” So those blatant expressions are racism. But this is not discussed much in the gay community because people think that this is a private issue, this is personal preference., it has got nothing to do with racism.
But I would argue in my book that it is. And of course, ethnic minorities are sometimes sexualized or sometimes over-sexualized, for example. So when people actually are seeing or hearing about a queer Asian, they have in mind a kind of a effeminate and really ladyboy type of person. And of course, I mean, there’s nothing wrong to be effeminate and there should be a celebration of different genders and sexualities, but there is usually a prejudice attached to such stereotyping.
So my suggestion is really that there should not be so much stereotyping and there should be, should not be value attached to those stereotyping of sexual and gender minority communities.
Delayna Spencer: Thank you so much. And I wanted to ask about one of the words in the title. So “queer” and that concept of queering, could you speak a bit more about that and how you use it, I guess as a verb?
Hongwai Bao: Yes. So queer, of course, used to be a deeply derogatory term, especially in the English language. However, from the 1980s and 90s, queer activists and scholars have appropriated this term for positive use. So we have queer cinema, queer politics, etc. And of course, with the globalization of sexual identities and politics, the term queer has also been translated into different Asian languages. For example, in Chinese language, queer is transliterated as literally “a cool kid.” So the term has gained some purchase in different communities as a positive identification or as a type of as a type of sexual politics. And it’s essentially a type of anti-identitarian politics as opposed to the gay identity politics, which presumably I mean advocates a kind of homo-normativity. But queerness really celebrates different types of genders and sexualities and so on.
So in my book, I use the term queer both as a noun to refer to an umbrella term for gender, sexual minorities and anti-identity sexual politics, as well as a verb “to queer,” which means to destabilize, to trouble or to problematize the heteronormative bias in our everyday language and in some community practices. Queering the Asian diaspora is not only to in a way to find the voices of where Asians in the diaspora and celebrate their voices, but also to question, to problematize, a heteronormative bias within the queer Asian within the Asian communities overall.
Delayna Spencer: Thank you. You spoke about queer as an umbrella term, and I wanted to move on to ESEA, which is East and Southeast Asian, which is being used more and more. I know the terminology didn’t come about just in 2020, but it has gained in popularity since then, and it reminds me of BAME, of course, Black, Asian and minority ethnic. And I think there are some positives and negatives in having that kind of umbrella term. I think on one hand you have a set of marginalized identities who are able to come together under a shared sense of oppression. But I think on the other hand, you can flatten those oppressions and I guess not see them as distinct. And those oppressions vary depending on which community you’re speaking about, and that can lead to not having a good understanding of what an Asian person experiences, what a Black person experiences, and of course, minority ethnic, that’s a whole bunch of different identities. So you’re really not able to see someone for that one identity that they inhabit. And I guess I wanted to ask how you feel about the merging ESEA identity and how you feel terms like this work or don’t work?
Hongwai Bao: That’s a great question. So let me first respond by distinguishing the two terms. The first term is BAME, Black and Asian minority ethnic, which is the UK government’s official designation for all ethnic minor minorities. And, of course ethnic minorities – a global majority ! – feel differently about the term, partly because this term erases all the differences. And of course, another reason is that it is a top-down term imposed by the government rather than coming from the communities. For example, the ESEA community, the East and Southeast Asian community, feel very much marginalized or invisible under such designation. So although BAME has an ‘A,’ has Asian in it, traditionally Asian is usually understood as South Asian in the UK’s population. So a lot of East and Southeast Asian people feel that they have not been represented in this kind of official statistics. In the national census, for example, many people may have to choose terms such as that belong to “Asian other” in order to find out their position in order to identify. So this form of identification actually proved to be problematic for the Eastern and Southeast Asian communities in recent years.
Actually in response to the kind of rising anti-Asian racism, Eastern and Southeast Asian communities came up with this term by themselves saying that we want to be called ESCA or ESEA, and this distinguishes from, for example, Chinese community. This also distinguishes from the South Asian community which has a longer history in the UK. So in a way this actually has its own positives. For example, it is able to bring together disparate populations, actually two together, to articulate a shared experience, a shared the shared experience, some marginalization and racism.
But at the same time, it also means, of course, not every community or not every person is happy with ‘their’ term, as with all the umbrella terms as you have mentioned. So I think that at the moment ESEA actually is becoming a kind of, at least, more and more mainstream and widely accepted. For example, we have ESEA Heritage Month, although not officially recognized by the UK government. We have ESEA Literary Festival, a lit fest that celebrates ESEA writers, and we also have ESEA Film Festival, ESEA organizations, and so on. So Manchester’s Art Chinese Art Center changes its name to ESEA Contemporary, which are all recent developments.
And under these umbrella terms, I think that a lot of people are doing great work to bring communities together. The term ESEA actually should be used for anti-colonial and anti-racist purposes. It shouldn’t create more divisions and hierarchies and exclusions. And of course, the term ESEA hasn’t taken into effective account gender and sexual minorities. The kind of heteronormative and patriarchal bias within the ESEA community as a result of the kind of confusion ESEA heritage and so on needs to be problematized. So that’s also another reason that I’m writing the book, which is an intervention into the contemporary ESEA cultural politics, advocating a kind of intersectional as well as a more diverse cultural ESEA cultural politics.
Delayna Spencer: Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much. And that actually moves into something else that I wanted to ask you about, which was the erasure of queer Asian identity, which you speak about in the book, and the long-lasting impact that that’s had. Could you go into a bit more detail about that, about how there has been that erasure, what the book does to unpack it and challenge it, and also presents, I guess, examples, cases that people can look to which celebrate their identity?
Hongwei Bao: That’s a great question. As a queer Asian myself, I have long felt that in my life what isn’t recognized isn’t validated, valid, validated and isn’t right is isn’t visible in society because I don’t see ESEA people like myself media and in books and in all kinds of representation, and in politics, and so on. So this is a problem and many ESEA members or queer Asian community members actually have suffered from mental health issues and depression and so on. They felt that that their life is not important enough.
So I think this has many reasons. Of course, a kind of invisibility of queer Asian identity is at stake. I mean, in queer community, I mean, people often associate queerness with kind of white and Western identity, so Asian queers may not feel queer enough within that community. And then in the kind of Asian community, there’s also a strong, in a way, conservative homophobic sentiment. I think that this doesn’t help queer Asian people’s mental health.
So what I hope to do with this book is really to highlight all these fantastic, ESEA cultural workers, activist and change makers and community organizations, so the readers can get inspiration from those great examples and case studies, so that they hopefully can also be inspired to be social changers themselves.
Delayna Spencer: And that moves nicely on to the next question I had for you, which is who do you envision this book being for? Who do you think will most appreciate it?
Hongwei Bao: I like to say that this book is for everyone. Everyone who’s interested in reading about queerness and Asian identity and migration, diaspora issues. But of course, specifically, I think that this book was specifically written for the queer Asian community living in the diaspora because it discusses some of the issues and some of the dilemmas, as well as politics, within the queer Asian community. And also, I would highlight that this is an interdisciplinary as well as transdisciplinary book. The book has wonderful examples of contemporary art, fashion, photography, of theater, and performance, of social and political activism. So I also hope that those who are interested in social activism, in particular cultural activism, would be interested in reading this book. So the book is a book for humanities as well as for social sciences.
Delayna Spencer: Your first case study in the book revolves around the Rabbit God, Tu’er Shen. Can you speak to the origin of the rabbit deity and the interesting ways that he’s been reimagined for a contemporary audience?
Hongwei Bao: Definitely. So this is a chapter that I really like because I’m a big fan of the Rabbit God. For those who don’t know, Rabbit God is an ancient Chinese, a god for LGBTQ+ people; it came from a kind of classical 17th century story, of a man who fell in love with another person but who was executed because of his gay love. And when he goes to the underworld, the king of the underworld crowned him as the Rabbit God, blessing all the LGBTQ+ people. It’s a beautiful story.
But of course mean the ancient classical text didn’t cover much; it was only a couple of paragraphs. So what I found with that Asian diasporic and queer cultural producers are making interesting artwork using this story. For example, in chapter 1, I analyzed three artist work including Alger Ji-Liang‘s work and Andrew Thomas Huang‘s work as well as Scotty So‘s work. So they are Asian diaspora, based in different parts of the world, in Melbourne, Australia, in Toronto, in Canada, as well as in LA in the USA. But inevitably they turn to the Rabbit God story and reinvent the story. For example, in Andrew Thomas Huang’s story, which is a film which you can find on YouTube called Kiss of the Rabbit God, Huang imagines a Rabbit God as a kind of fashionable young person visiting a Chinatown restaurant and then falling in love with a kitchen hand, an ordinary restaurant worker in a Chinatown restaurant. Falling in love and inspired him to pursue his own true love.
So this is a fascinating story about Asian migration experience in the USA and the living conditions of some of them, especially those who work in Chinatown restaurants, as well as a kind of old celebration, a queer desire, not necessarily drawing on symbols such as a rainbow flag and pride and so on, but drawing on the ancient Chinese story of the Rabbit God. So the Rabbit God became kind of a way to empower them, a way to imagine the possibility of queer Asian identity, sexuality and existence. I find this is a beautiful example.
So, by writing about those stories, I do not mean that there is this origin of queer Asian myth that everybody should go back to, but to say that here there is this kind of indigenous tradition. The tradition should be used, revitalized for the contemporary purposes. Don’t stick to what an ancient god was, but what it can become for our own purposes, whether it’s a purpose of writing about someone else, biography, or articulate some contemporary concerns such as anti-Asian racism, or talk about issues such as labor politics. So, in a way, I find those art works innovative and interesting. I want to celebrate those artworks, as well as celebrate the queer Asian identity.
So in a way, queer Asian identity, like the Rabbit God, shouldn’t stay the same. They should be reinvented and reimagined and fabulated and imagined in the wildest way possible.
Delayna Spencer: Thank you so much, Hongwei. I feel like your answer to that question especially gives people a real taste of the richness of the book. I hope that really encourages people to go and read it. It’s fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, and thank you again for taking part in the series as well.
Hongwei Bao: Thank you, Delayna, for this wonderful discussion.
