Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia

Asia Pop!

by Thomas Baudinette (Contributor), Allison Alexy (Series Editor), Poowin Bunyavejchewin (Contributor)

The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL's male-male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects.



Queer Transfigurations is the first detailed examination of the BL media explosion across Asia. The book brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia--and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms.

Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. In short, Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Essays, LGBT, Fandom

312 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 2022

Reviews

[Phi (lurkingcrow on pagebound) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was certainly a breath of fresh air after wading through one too many heated Twitter threads attempting to debate every aspect of BL and the people who enjoy it. The authors of such threads should check out this volume instead, and perhaps there would be more mutual understanding.

[melis · Rating 4 out of 5]

doing my assigned reading for my phd in yaoi

this was thorough if a bit repetitive at times, and i enjoyed the scope it covered, especially the philippines and india. bl the world my final message goodbye

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrific resource for BL fans and researchers

This book is a must-read for those interested in the past, present and future of BL. With a global focus, the researchers here really get into the global reach of BL.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The contributors to this volume seek to chart the paths taken by Boys Love (BL) writers and fans to adapt this originally Japanese genre to the particulars of the several Asian countries where it has achieved a silent, or not so silent, presence. With receptions ranging from the overt hostility in countries like Indonesia and Singapore, to the quieter disapproval in countries like the Philippines and Thailand, the BL genre has managed to achieved a foothold in drastically different societies, with varying majorities of women or LGBT readers. The contributors aim to examine the impact of BL readership on LGBT issues or even overtly political issues, such as the democracy movement in Taiwan. They also aim to highlight the differences between the idealized world of the stories and the reality of living as an LGBT person or a sexually-empowered women in many of this overtly patriarchal societies.

[Alan D.D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive project that left me wanting to know more about the field. With so many essays, different points of view, it's easy to go down the rabbit hole as you get fascinated page after page. Some chapters were heavier than others, some didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I'm still impressive nonetheless.

[naviya · Rating 2 out of 5]

- pretty repititive and basic, overgeneralizing
- the interview analysis wasn't very rigorous either
- liked the intro to bl in india and SEA
- i wanted it to be more queer theory but it was just a survey but that's also on me for misunderstanding what this book was gonna be like

[zip program, san bruno public library]