Transpacific Attachments

Shu-mei Shih, University of California, Los Angeles:
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.

Yiman Wang, University California, Santa Cruz:
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.

Karen Thornber, Harvard 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.

Andrea Bachner, Cornell University:
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.