Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Area / regional studies
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Western Queers in China - Flight to the Land of Oz (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,249
Discovery Miles 22 490
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Western Queers in China - Flight to the Land of Oz (Hardcover)
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This unique work examines the role played by sexuality in the
historical encounter between China and the West. Distinguished
historian D. E. Mungello focuses especially on Western homosexuals
who saw China as a place of escape from the homophobia of Europe
and North America. His groundbreaking study traces the lives of two
dozen men, many previously unknown to have same-sex desire, who
fled to China and in the process influenced perceptions of Chinese
culture to this day. Their individual stories encompass flight from
homophobia in their home countries, the erotic attraction of
Chinese boy-actors, friendships with Chinese men, intellectual
connections with the Chinese, and the reorientation of Western
aesthetics toward China. Mungello explores historical attitudes and
the atmosphere of oppression toward men with same-sex desire as he
recounts the intensification of repression of queers in Europe and
North America in the late nineteenth-century. He shows how China
became a place of escape, a homosexual "land of Oz" where men could
flee from the closets of their minds. Some traveled to China and
lived there; others immersed themselves in Chinese culture at a
distance. Most established long-term friendships and acted as
cultural intermediaries who opened the aesthetic range of Western
culture to a new sense of beauty and a fresh source of inspiration
for poets, artists, and dramatists. Their "boys"-Chinese males
whose services were available at low cost as messengers, rickshaw
pullers, guides, cooks, entertainers, escorts, and prostitutes-were
transformed into a universal metaphor of Chinese culture that
lingers to this day. Indeed, outside men's range of relationships,
intellectual and physical, have had a profound impact in shaping
the modern Western conception of China.
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