Title
The emerging lesbian : female same-sex desire in modern China / Tze-lan D. Sang.
ISBN
0226734781 (cloth ; alk. paper)
9780226734781 (cloth ; alk. paper)
0226734803 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
9780226734804 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
Published
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2003]
Copyright
©2003
Language
English
Description
xi, 380 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Call Number
HQ75.6.C6 S25 2003
Dewey Decimal Classification
305.48/9664/0951
Summary
In early twentieth-century China, age-old traditions of homosocial and homoerotic relationships between women suddenly became an issue of widespread public concern. Discussed formerly in terms of friendship and sisterhood, these relationships came to be associated with feminism, on the one hand, and psychobiological perversion, on the other--a radical shift whose origins have long been unclear. In this first ever book-length study of Chinese lesbians, Tze-lan D. Sang convincingly ties the debate over female same-sex love in China to the emergence of Chinese modernity. As women's participation in social, economic, and political affairs grew, Sang argues, so too did the societal significance of their romantic and sexual relations. Focusing especially on literature by or about women-preferring women, Sang traces the history of female same-sex relations in China from the late imperial period (1600-1911) through the Republican era (1912-1949). She ends by examining the reemergence of public debate on lesbians in China after Mao and in Taiwan after martial law, including the important roles played by globalization and identity politics.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-271) and index.
Series
Worlds of desire.
Introduction
PREMODERN CHINA: Revisiting premodern China female-female relations
Odd girls in Pu Songling's tales of the strange
REPUBLICAN CHINA: Translating homosexuality: the discourse of Tongxing ai in Republican China
Female same-sex love in May Fourth fiction
CHINA AFTER MAO: The brave new world of post-Mao China: an overview
Lin Bai's narratives of homoerotic desire
Gender-transcendent consciousness and private life
TAIWAN AFTER MARTIAL LAW: Lesbian activism in the mediated public sphere
The autobiographical lesbian.
