Abstract
This book provides astute insights on the radicalized, gendered, and sexualized constructions of Asian American femininity and masculinity. Drawing on narrative analyses of qualitative interviews on home, identity, and interpersonal relations, Asian American Sexual Politics aims to demonstrate how white supremacy develops, promotes, and makes dominant particular contradictory images of Asian American femininity and masculinity, drawing simultaneously on seemingly positive images as aesthetically-desired model minorities and on negative representations as sexually passive Asian male and domineering Asian female. With the book, Rosalind Chou seeks to promote a more productive dialogue that goes beyond these unrealistic dominating images.
To achieve the aims of the book, Chou uses guiding and analytical concepts from scholars such as Joe Feagin, Patricia Hill Collins, and Yen Le Espiritu and implicitly integrates intersectional analysis developed by feminist lesbian-of-color thinkers such as Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, and Merle Woo to analyze racialized hegemonic frames relating Asian American gender and the symbolic body. The interviews presented convey the ways that interactions at home, at school, and in public serve to frame and construct gender and sexuality. Chou also analyzes the effects of these frames on Asian American identities and how some Asian Americans are able to verbalize counter-narrative frames and enact strategies in relation to radicalized and gendered interpersonal politics. In addition, she provides fitting snippets of personal experiences to introduce and illuminate the key argument of each chapter, and interjects notable news reports as exemplars within the chapters.
The strongest chapter of the book focuses on sexual politics and, in particular, on the dynamics and challenges in intimate relationships and interracial dating faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual Asian Americans. Chou highlights how Asian Americans negotiate with family members, friends, and acquaintances over racially dominant standards and perceptions of ideal compatibility traits and bodily, intimate, and erotic attractions. For instance, Chou’s analysis draws attention to the ways that parents perpetuate hegemonic frames, such as that of light and white skin-color as a societal “beauty” standard, influencing selection of partner preferences away from non-white racial-ethnic minorities. Moreover, Chou highlights how some Asian Americans generate counter-narratives to dominant standards, resulting in racially unconventional yet more egalitarian relationships.
What is unsettling about the book, however, is its relative lack of methodological clarity and transparency. Specifics on research design are presented only in five paragraphs (pp. 5–6) and among a few endnotes. Inclusion of a detailed description of and reflection on the research, presented for instance in an appendix, would be instructional. Chou mentions how the study uses narrative analysis, yet scantly explains the type or approach of narrative analysis that was used. For a novice reader, the findings may seem superficial and journalistic without sufficient explanation of narrative analysis. If the aim is to cultivate more open dialogue on Asian American sexual politics, there is then a greater need to make more explicit how sociologists are able to develop claims supported by interviews. The book also disappoints by not explaining how it aims to use Michael Burawoy’s extended case method, which emphasizes the importance of doing reflexive participant observations. In contrast, the book draws on in-depth interviews of sixty Asian Americans, rather than critical and reflexive analysis of observations as proposed by Burawoy.
Furthermore, readers of the book deserve a fuller, more systematic account of the interview participants and the interview guide. Chou provides the gender composition of the participants and states that seven were identified as lesbian, gay, and bisexual and the twelve were of South Asian descent. Additional details on how these participants come to take part in the study and how the interviews were conducted should be included. These methodological details are important to furnish a sensible context to the participants’ responses. While limited contexts were provided in introducing interview quotes, more would have explained how personal contexts may impact particular frames. For instance, objective and subjective accounts of class as context were lacking in the description of participants. The oversampling of participants with high educational attainment is mentioned, yet there is no analysis of how such oversampling affects the findings, particularly since the motivation of the study was to go beyond model-minority frames. Furthermore, heritage experiences (such as comparing Filipino and Korean descendants), migrant status, and regional location (such as the Queens borough in New York City compared to Texas Hill Country) are important in affecting Asian American gender practices, yet there is no account of variations of heritage, migrant, and refugee experiences and regional location among the interview participants. A richer biographic account of interview participants would enrich the overall analysis. The analysis of mass, new, and alternative media reporting and representation needs also to be more thorough. Casual inclusion of media reports on bullying, for instance, seems out of place without the accompanying inclusion of appropriate analysis of interview narratives.
Theoretically, the book starts to offer a social constructionist model of Asian American masculinity and femininity that emphasizes the primacy of white racial frames and suggests the possibilities of counter-frames and counter-practices. Yet the book does not sufficiently present this model fully. Deeper theoretical attention to class, locational context, cultural-knowledge institutions (such as religion and the media), and societal power would have provided a deeper understanding of the production and circulation of these racial frames and how they may change.
The closing discussion of interpersonal coping and countering strategies for Asian Americans against dominant racial frames is strong. Still, more prominent theoretical attention could have been given to coping and the countering strategies as frames. For instance, there should be a clear distinction on whether to consider the practices of Asian American “bad boy posturing” as coping, resistance, or complicity to racially dominant frames. Some “bad boy posturing” can be analyzed in context as a combination of coping, resistance, or complicity. Also, what is needed is a sufficient delineation of how legal initiatives, proper policy reforms, Asian American nationalist movements, feminist and lesbian organizations, activists, and their writings develop innovative counter-frames to white dominance. Notably, there were no guarantees that such counter-frames would automatically challenge misogynistic, heterosexist, and pro-capitalist ideas and practices.
In all, Chou offers a carefully crafted and remarkably informative introduction to Asian American gender relations and construction through lively everyday examples. Despite some minor shortcomings, the book makes an important and provocative contribution to social psychological studies and, particularly, those integrating racial-ethnic identity formation and racialized constructions of gender and sexual practices. It also contributes to an increased awareness of these issues for public and policy dialogue.