Queer Chinese literature: from classical texts to contemporary fan fiction

Bao, Hongwei

Abstract

This article examines queer literature in Mainland China from classical texts to contemporary Internet literature and fan fiction. Queer literature is broadly defined here as literary texts depicting non-heteronormative genders, sexualities and desires, regardless of the author’s or the reader’s gender and sexual identity although the latter can shape the ‘queerness’ of a text in myriad ways. This article is structured in a chronological order following the conventional Chinese histography, with a focus on the literary production in the post-Mao era. This history points to the openness and multiplicity of queerness, as well as how China’s historical, social and cultural contexts have shaped queer texts, and how queer texts have in turn responded to China’s social change. This history of queer texts challenges the heteronormativity of conventional Chinese historiography and literary canon, enriches global queer history and theory from non-Western perspectives, and compels a rethinking of what queerness and literature can do to create identities, communities, politics and social change.

Citation

Bao, H. (in press). Queer Chinese literature: from classical texts to contemporary fan fiction. In Routledge Encyclopaedia in Chinese Studies

• Deposit Date: Nov 13, 2023
• Book Title: Routledge Encyclopaedia in Chinese Studies
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/27368610
• Contract Date: Sep 3, 2023