Sticky Rice: A Politics of Intraracial Desire

Cynthia Wus provocative Sticky Rice examines representations of same-sex desires and intraracial intimacies in some of the most widely read pieces of Asian American literature. Analyzing canonical works such as John Okadas No-No Boy, Monique Truongs The Book of Salt, H. T. Tsiangs And China Has Hands, and Lois-Ann Yamanakas Blus Hanging, as well as Philip Kan Gotandas play, Yankee Dawg You Die, Wu considers how male relationships in these texts blur the boundaries among the homosocial, the homoerotic, and the homosexual in ways that lie beyond our concepts of modern gay identity. The sticky rice of Wus title is a term used in gay Asian American culture to describe Asian American men who desire other Asian American men. The bonds between men addressed in Sticky Rice show how the thoughts and actions founded by real-life intraracially desiring Asian-raced men can inform how we read the refusal of multiple normativities in Asian Americanist discourse. Wu lays bare the trope of male same-sex desires that grapple with how Asian Americas internal divides can be resolved in order to resist assimilation.