Sticky Rice: A Politics of Intraracial Desire: A Politics of Intraracial Desire

by Cynthia Wu

Cynthia Wu’s provocative Sticky Rice examines representations of same-sex desires and intraracial intimacies in some of the most widely read pieces of Asian American literature. Analyzing canonical works such as John Okada’s No-No Boy , Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt , H. T. Tsiang’s And China Has Hands , and Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging , as well as Philip Kan Gotanda’s play, Yankee Dawg You Die, Wu considers how male relationships in these texts blur the boundaries among the homosocial, the homoerotic, and the homosexual in ways that lie beyond our concepts of modern gay identity. The “sticky rice” of Wu’s title is a term used in gay Asian American culture to describe Asian American men who desire other Asian American men. The bonds between men addressed in Sticky Rice show how the thoughts and actions founded by real-life intraracially desiring Asian-raced men can inform how we read the refusal of multiple normativities in Asian Americanist discourse. Wu lays bare the trope of male same-sex desires that grapple with how Asian America’s internal divides can be resolved in order to resist assimilation.

212 pages, Paperback

Published August 31, 2018

Reviews

[Aimee Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

the 4 star rating is on me for reading this book on the plane when i wasn't super focused. but truly so interesting. in my dream life i get to study and write a thesis like this. cited nayan shah's writing on chinatowns + their perceived danger to the heterosexual nuclear family model which i have always wanted to read in more depth. i think i need to reread after reading/watching the works analyzed in this one tho.