Inscrutable Belongings: Narrative and Survival in Queer Asian North American Fiction

Inscrutable Belongings brings together formalist and contextual modes of critique to consider narrative strategies that emerge in queer Asian North American literature. Stephen Hong Sohn provides extended readings of fictions involving queer Asian North American storytellers, looking to texts including Russell Leong's "Camouflage," Lydia Kwa's Pulse, Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters, and Noël Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift. Despite many antagonistic forces, these works' protagonists achieve a revolutionary form of narrative centrality through the defiant act of speaking out, recounting their "survival plots," and enduring to the very last page. These feats are made possible through their construction of alternative social structures Sohn calls "inscrutable belongings." Collectively, the texts that Sohn examines bring to mind foundational struggles for queer Asian North Americans (and other socially marginalized groups) and confront a broad range of issues, including interracial desire, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, transnational mobility, and postcolonial trauma. In these texts, Asian North American queer people are often excluded from normative family structures and must contend with multiple histories of oppression, erasure, and physical violence, involving homophobia, racism, and social death. Sohn's work makes clear that for such writers and their imagined communities, questions of survival, kinship, and narrative development are more than representational—they are directly tied to lived experience. Inscrutable Belongings brings together formalist and contextual modes of critique to consider narrative strategies that emerge in queer Asian North American literature. Stephen Hong Sohn provides extended readings of fictions involving queer Asian North American storytellers, looking to texts including Russell Leong's "Camouflage," Lydia Kwa's Pulse , Alexander Chee's Edinburgh , Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters , and Noel Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift . Despite many antagonistic forces, these works' protagonists achieve a revolutionary form of narrative centrality through the defiant act of speaking out, recounting their "survival plots," and enduring to the very last page. These feats are made possible through their construction of alternative social structures Sohn calls "inscrutable belongings." Collectively, the texts that Sohn examines bring to mind foundational struggles for queer Asian North Americans (and other socially marginalized groups) and confront a broad range of issues, including interracial desire, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, transnational mobility, and postcolonial trauma. In these texts, Asian North American queer people are often excluded from normative family structures and must contend with multiple histories of oppression, erasure, and physical violence, involving homophobia, racism, and social death. Sohn's work makes clear that for such writers and their imagined communities, questions of survival, kinship, and narrative development are more than representational--they are directly tied to lived experience. Introduction : Imagining Queer Asian North American Lives -- Tactical Diversions : Toward Queer Asian North American Formalisms -- Narrative Endurance : Queer Asian North American Storytellers, Survival Plots And Inscrutable Belongings -- Inscrutable Belongings In Pathology : Infectious Genealogies In Alexander Chee's Edinburgh -- Inscrutable Belongings In Cinema : Filmic Lineages In Noël Alumit's Letters To Montgomery Clift -- Inscrutable Belongings In Hunting : Interracial Surrogacies In Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters -- Inscrutable Belongings In Bondage : Degenerate Descendants In Lydia Kwa's Pulse. Stephen Hong Sohn. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Introduction : Imagining Queer Asian North American Lives -- Tactical Diversions : Toward Queer Asian North American Formalisms -- Narrative Endurance : Queer Asian North American Storytellers, Survival Plots And Inscrutable Belongings -- Inscrutable Belongings In Pathology : Infectious Genealogies In Alexander Chee's Edinburgh -- Inscrutable Belongings In Cinema : Filmic Lineages In No�el Alumit's Letters To Montgomery Clift -- Inscrutable Belongings In Hunting : Interracial Surrogacies In Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters -- Inscrutable Belongings In Bondage : Degenerate Descendants In Lydia Kwa's Pulse. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 A Note on Usage......Page 16 Introduction: Imagining Queer Asian North American Lives......Page 20 1. Tactical Diversions: Toward Queer Asian North American Formalisms......Page 46 2. Narrative Endurance: Queer Asian North American Storytellers, Survival Plots, and Inscrutable Belongings......Page 78 3. Inscrutable Belongings in Pathology: Infectious Genealogies in Alexander Chee's Edinburgh......Page 106 4. Inscrutable Belongings in Cinema: Filmic Lineages in Noël Alumit's Letters to Montgomery Clift......Page 142 5. Inscrutable Belongings in Hunting: Interracial Surrogacies in Nina Revoyr's Wingshooters......Page 178 6. Inscrutable Belongings in Bondage: Degenerate Descendants in Lydia Kwa's Pulse......Page 216 Coda......Page 254 Notes......Page 260 References......Page 286 A......Page 326 C......Page 327 F......Page 328 H......Page 329 K......Page 330 M......Page 331 P......Page 332 S......Page 333 T......Page 334 Z......Page 335