Fiction Nonfiction Poetry Photography Performing Arts Resources
Nonfiction
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Purchase in Hong Kong at Eslite, Kubrick, Swindon Book Co., Ltd., and Commercial Press.
Online at HKU Press, Book Depository and Amazon. |
Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong
Unspoken but Unforgotten By Travis S.K. Kong Life histories that shine a light on identity and masculinity, ageing and sexuality, power and resistance: thirteen gay men share their lives in the updated English edition of Travis Kong’s groundbreaking Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten (Hong Kong University Press, 2019). Kong has collected oral histories of men aged sixty and over, capturing the complexities of their lives interwoven with the territory’s history. The difficulties and hardships the men encountered, at a time when homosexual acts were a criminal offense, are examined from colonial to contemporary times. The work inspired the film Suk Suk (叔．叔), a 2019 Hong Kong drama written and directed by Ray Yeung that presents the story of two closeted married men in their twilight years. The film received best narrative feature, best leading actors, best supporting actress and best original screenplay nominations from the 2019 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards and won best movie and best actor awards from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society in 2019. |
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Intimate Strangers
is available in ebook and paper formats on Amazon and Book Depository. Book review: South China Morning Post |
Intimate Strangers
True Stories from Queer Asia Edited by Carmen Ho, Gregg Schroeder (Signal 8 Press, 2019) Family, love, friendship, acceptance—none of these pillars of happiness are certainties for LGBTQ+ people. Yet, despite social and legal conventions, the fifteen writers collected here from eastern Asia and beyond have built lives of fulfilment and joy. Intimate Strangers showcases the nonfiction work of writers living life on their own authentic terms. By turns experimental, nostalgic, provocative and poignant, these stories—bringing to life devoted daughters; boys coming of age; a transgender woman; and gay, queer, and bi parents—are unified by their excellence and by the risks the writers take. Together they form a rich community of voices that reflects the diversity of LGBTQ+ life in and around the Asia-Pacific region today. Aaron Chan * Jenna Collett * Nancy L. Conyers * Edward Gunawan * Huang Haisu * Hayley Katzen * Germaine Trittle P. Leonin * Krista V. Melgarejo * Colum Murphy * Ingvild Solvang * Ember Swift * Agatha Verdadero * Beatrice Wong * Simon Wu * Alistair Yong |
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The Chinese edition of Chinese Male Homosexualities
《華人男同志跨地域研究》 is published by CUHK, 2018 |
華人男同志跨地域研究
Chinese Male Homosexualities By Travis Kong (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2018) The Chinese edition of Travis Kong’s research into Chinese same-sex experience in Hong Kong, mainland China and the UK is now published. The book,《華人男同志跨地域研究》(CUHK, 2018), is a translated version of Kong’s English book Chinese Male Homosexualities (Routledge, 2011). This is the first sociological study that uses the notion of “sexual citizenship” to examine Chinese men with same-sex experiences, through 90 life stories. In this talk, Kong will discuss the major findings of the research and then highlight what has changed (or has not changed) in terms of the development of gay identity and the fight for sexual citizenship in these three locales over the past decade. |
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A Death in Hong Kong
is published by CityU HK Press, 2018 |
A Death in Hong Kong:
The MacLennan Case of 1980 and the Suppression of a Scandal By Nigel Collett (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2018) In January 1980, a young police officer named John MacLennan committed suicide in his Ho Man Tin flat. His death came hours before he was to be arrested for committing homosexual acts still, at that point, illegal in Hong Kong. But this was more than the desperate act of a young man ashamed or afraid; both his death and the subsequent investigation were a smokescreen for a scandal that went to the heart of the establishment. MacLennan came to Hong Kong from Scotland during a time of social unrest and corruption scandals, a time when the triads still took their cut, and when homosexuality and paedophilia were considered interchangeable and offered easy targets for bribery. The governorship of Sir Murray MacLehose was to be a time of reform and progress, but with that remit came the determination of many to suppress scandals and silence those who stirred up trouble. Both the life and death of John MacLennan seemed to many of those in power to threaten the stability of one of Britain’s last colonies. All this happened nearly forty years ago. Is it relevant today? “The MacLennan case is an extreme example of what discrimination, in this case on the basis of sexuality, can do,” Collett said in a recent interview. “Lives can be lost. Yes, things have improved since homosexual activity was decriminalised in 1991, but we can’t be complacent. The social stigma is still there and without an effective anti-discrimination law, that won’t change.” A Death in Hong Kong opens a window on the attitudes to homosexuality and paedophilia of the late colonial era. |
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Mud Between Your Toes
can be purchased on Amazon. Andrew Ashley talks with
Peter Wood: Mud Between Your Toes |
Mud Between Your Toes
A Rhodesian Farm A memoir by Peter Wood This is a story about identity in a world gone awry. Peter Wood is an African. A white African. He is also Chinese. A white Chinese. And he is gay. Based on diaries Wood began forty years ago, the story begins in Hong Kong and tracks back to Wood’s teen years surrounded by the beauty of a wild Southern African farm, tormented by his sexuality and first sexual experience and scarred by the civil war that raged on his family’s doorstep. The mid-1970s was a dangerous time in Rhodesia, but an innocent time too, when children were left to amuse themselves among snakes, crocodiles and wildlife, enjoying a freedom and fragile innocence that might snap at any time. As Wood the boy grew up, he found himself separated from his best friend, and discovers a world where black does not mix with white. |
Afterness Literature from the New Transnational Asia Edited by Rebekah Chan, Gregg Schroeder, Jenn Chan Lyman, Quenntis Ashby, Amanda Webster Poetry and fiction, memoir and lyrical essay: Afterness showcases the perspectives of 65 writers whose lives are based in or touch upon Asia; all are graduates of the City University of Hong Kong Master of Fine Arts programme, started by author Xu Xi in 2010 and closed by the university after five years to the highly-publicized dismay of the international literary community. The anthology is a university-funded legacy project for the programme unveiled at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. More on Afterness: Literature from the New Transnational Asia can be found at www.facebook.com/AfternessAnthology. |
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Li Xiang Lan
can be purchased in Hong Kong at Bookazine. |
Li Xian Lan:
The Story of Yoshiko Yamaguchi By Eric Lowe Singer, propaganda film star and politician Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who died in 2014 aged 94, walked the line between the China of her birth and the Japan of her ancestry; accused of collaboration with the Japanese, the actress whose stage name was Li Xian Lan took her performing talents to Japan, Hollywood, Broadway and Hong Kong. Later in life, Yamaguchi worked as a television journalist covering Palestine and Vietnam War before serving 18 years in the Japanese parliament. |
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Something Positive
is available from bookshops and AIDS Concern. |
Something Positive
十愛 － 十個Positive的故事 Produced by AIDS Concern This collection of short stories produced by AIDS Concern to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in Hong Kong, depicts the moving and sometimes surprising ways people adapt, and how they cope with HIV and AIDS. The stories challenge the reader to reassess beliefs and attitudes surrounding the disease. Available in English and Chinese editions, the five English stories are written by Hong Kong writers Roy Kwong, Ryan Lau, Shiu Ka Chun, Tang Kit Ming and Yezhiwei. The Chinese edition includes five more stories. |
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Oral History of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong
is available through the publisher: Step Forward Multimedia Co Ltd. (2014) |
Oral History of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong
男男正傳：香港年長男同志口述史 By Travis Kong Twelve gay men living through times of tumult and change are examined in Travis Kong’s new book: Oral History of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong. The book is illustrated with recent photos of the men and is published in Chinese:《男男正傳：香港年長男同志口述史》. The collected histories of the men aged sixty and over capture the complexities of lives interwoven with the territory’s history. The difficulties and hardships the men encountered, especially due to their sexual orientation at a time when homosexual acts were a criminal offense, are examined from colonial to contemporary times. The book includes photographs of the respondents by four artists, Chan Ka Kei, Gyorgy Ali Palos, Bobby KH Sham and Wong Kan-tai. |
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Firelight of a Different Colour is published by Signal 8 Press (2014) and available through Typhoon Media, Amazon and Book Depository
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Firelight of a Different Colour:
The Life and Times of Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing By Nigel Collett When Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing threw himself to his death from the terrace of Hong Kong’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel in 2003, he was the greatest star of his generation in the city. A performer loved for his character as much as for his magic as an entertainer, his death sent shock waves across Asia and amongst Asian populations around the world. Despite the fact that he was openly gay, he was adored, and remains adored, by multitudes in societies where his sexual orientation remains a little-discussed taboo. Firelight of a Different Colour traces Leslie’s story from birth in 1950s Hong Kong to his death during the city’s crippling SARS epidemic. Through initial struggles to gain a foothold in TV and the nascent world of Cantopop, he achieved final success as a megastar of music and the big screen and held that position for nearly two decades. At the forefront of almost all the cultural changes Hong Kong saw during his lifetime, Leslie came to embody the unique spirit of the city. No western performer can boast so widespread an influence across so many arts. Firelight of a Different Colour commemorates a life that continues to amaze and inspire. |
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Shanghai Lalas
is published by Hong Kong University Press (2013) and available from the publisher, major online booksellers and bookstores, both in print and ebook format. |
Shanghai Lalas:
Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China By Lucetta Yip Lo Kam This is the first ethnographic study of lala (lesbian, bisexual and transgender) communities and politics in China, focusing on the city of Shanghai. Based on several years of in-depth interviews, the volume concentrates on lalas’ everyday struggle to reconcile same-sex desire with a dominant rhetoric of family harmony and compulsory marriage, all within a culture denying women’s active and legitimate sexual agency. Lucetta Yip Lo Kam reads discourses on homophobia in China, including the rhetoric of “Chinese tolerance” and considers the heteronormative demands imposed on tongzhi subjects. She treats “the politics of public correctness” as a newly emerging tongzhi practice developed from the culturally specific, Chinese forms of regulation that inform tongzhi survival strategies and self-identification. Alternating between Kam’s own queer biography and her extensive ethnographic findings, this text offers a contemporary portrait of female tongzhi communities and politics in urban China, making an invaluable contribution to global discussions and international debates on same-sex intimacies, homophobia, coming-out politics, and sexual governance. |
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Always Forever
is published by Signal 8 Press (2012) and is available in English and Chinese from Typhoon Media and Amazon. |
Always Forever
By Ansh Das From the depths of sorrow begins a journey of hope. The dream of a life together is shattered when AD finds himself attending Mikee’s funeral. He is overcome with grief. But Mikee’s brief appearance in his life was not by chance; it was to trigger a spiritual awakening. With help from Mikee’s family and friends, AD sets about piecing together Mikee’s story. As he begins to discover life’s lessons through Mikee’s eyes, AD finds himself falling in love with an entire nation. |
No Babylon:
A Hong Kong Scrapbook By Peter Moss Having witnessed Britain’s retreat from India in 1947, and Malaya in 1957, Peter Moss traveled on through the lengthening shadows of a waning Empire, seeking the last remnants of a once flourishing panoply of imperial pomp and circumstance. He arrived in Hong Kong to find this fabled territory less a British colony than a triumph of collective enterprise; no mythic Babylon but a vibrant and compelling reality. His Hong Kong career spanned four decades, from the spillover of China’s cultural revolution to the return of its prodigal son at midnight on 30 June 1997. In his take on events leading up to that historical watershed Moss has drawn on Chinese sources to present a wider perspective, and has not flinched from challenging popular perceptions. He saw Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last governor, as a knight in shining armour, riding in at the eleventh hour to slay the dragon, but “I felt there was a distinct danger of him accidentally killing the damsel in distress.” Many have loved and admired Hong Kong but few have grasped its intricacies. That an enclave so small should have become so powerful, and left such a mark on the world, is a mystery that No Babylon seeks to probe and dispel. “Had he discovered Hong Kong first, Karl Marx might never have written Das Kapital, for this hubble-bubble of experimental capitalist alchemy contradicted so many of his theories.” |
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While Lunar Desires is currently out of print, it is available through public and university libraries in Hong Kong.
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Lunar Desires:
Her First Same-Sex Love in Her Own Words 月亮的騷動-她她的初戀故事：我們的自述 By Lucetta Yip Lo Kam and Eleanor Cheung Lunar Desires (in traditional Chinese) is a collection of 26 self-narratives of Chinese women from Hong Kong, Macau and overseas about their first same-sex love story. It is the first book of its kind published in Hong Kong. |
Periodicals and online publications
PLUG
PLUG Magazine is dedicated to the positive exposure of the LGBT community in Hong Kong with the goal of making the community more accessible and visible. PLUG’s mission is to educate and entertain by highlighting key people and organizations advocating for the LGBT community and by featuring local and international artists. Launched in 2013, the quarterly is described by the team of friends who created it as “the city’s freshest community and culture magazine and the only one explicitly serving the full spectrum of LGBT people.” |
