In gay bars and nightclubs across America, and in gay-oriented
magazines and media, the buff, macho, white gay man is exalted as
the ideal-the most attractive, the most wanted, and the most
emulated type of man. For gay Asian American men, often viewed by
their peers as submissive or too 'pretty,' being sidelined in the
gay community is only the latest in a long line of
racially-motivated offenses they face in the United
States.Repeatedly marginalized by both the white-centric queer
community that values a hyper-masculine sexuality and a homophobic
Asian American community that often privileges masculine
heterosexuality, gay Asian American men largely have been silenced
and alienated in present-day culture and society. In Geisha of a
Different Kind, C. Winter Han travels from West Coast Asian drag
shows to the internationally sought-after Thai kathoey, or
"ladyboy," to construct a theory of queerness that is inclusive of
the race and gender particularities of the gay Asian male
experience in the United States. Through ethnographic observation
of queer Asian American communities and Asian American drag shows,
interviews with gay Asian American men, and a reading of current
media and popular culture depictions of Asian Americans, Han argues
that gay Asian American men, used to gender privilege within their
own communities, must grapple with the idea that, as Asians, they
have historically been feminized as a result of Western domination
and colonization, and as a result, they are minorities within the
gay community, which is itself marginalized within the overall
American society. Han also shows that many Asian American gay men
can turn their unusual position in the gay and Asian American
communities into a positive identity. In their own conception of
self, their Asian heritage and sexuality makes these men unique,
special, and, in the case of Asian American drag queens, much more
able to convey a convincing erotic femininity. Challenging
stereotypes about beauty, nativity, and desirability, Geisha of a
Different Kind makes a major intervention in the study of race and
sexuality in America.
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