by Carman K.M. Fung
University of Michigan Press, 2027
Cloth: 978-0-472-07861-5
Paper: 978-0-472-05861-7
eISBN: 978-0-472-90716-8 (OA)
For decades queer women in the Sinophone world have followed a strict dating custom: a lesbian relationship usually consists of a masculine partner, known as a tomboy, and a feminine counterpart. In the 2010s, however, many queer women have come to reject this custom and abandon their own former identities as tomboys. Leaving The Tomboy Behind follows their journey moving beyond lesbian masculinity and turning towards global LGBTQ+ media from Japan, Thailand, and the United States to explore new forms of gender expressions. Carman K. M. Fung offers a rich ethnography of the impacts media has had on queer Sinophone women’s lives, focusing on transnational interpretations and misinterpretations, and how media globalization shapes viewers’ perceptions of unfamiliar places. Through a combination of personal interviews and analysis of the global media these communities consume, Fung traces the genealogy of the tomboy identity in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in relation to global queer and trans cultures.
Carman K. M. Fung is Lecturer in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University.
“Leaving the Tomboy Behind will be an invaluable addition to the exploration of women’s sexualities and subjectivities in Asia. It provides theoretical updates in the field and addresses key identity shifts on the ground.”
— Denise Tse-Shang Tang, Lingnan University“Leaving the Tomboy Behind offers us a rich model of how media audiences process texts borrowed from other historical and national contexts in making sense of one’s own gender and sexual identity. I especially appreciated the focus on utopian imaginations and creative misreadings.”
— Henry Jenkins, University of Southern CaliforniaLicense: CC BY-NC
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