Backward Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary

by Fran Martin

Backward Glances reveals that the passionate love one woman feels for another occupies a position of unsuspected centrality in contemporary Chinese mass cultures. By examining representations of erotic and romantic love between women in popular films, elite and pulp fiction, and television dramas, Fran Martin shows how youthful same-sex love is often framed as a universal, even ennobling, feminine experience. She argues that a temporal logic dominates depictions of female homoeroticism, and she traces that logic across texts produced and consumed in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan during the twentieth century and the early twenty-first.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Lesbian, China

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[93 Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of such great analysis, information and insights. Tons of books, TV shows, and movies which have made their way onto my watch/read list. Really makes you think on the West's normalization and labels of sexuality might be restrictive or impose a narrative which doesn't apply for everyone's experiences.