Refusing Normativity

Queer theorists of color have illuminated the extensive and pervasive ways sexuality and race are interconnected. In Refusing Normativity Lynn Fujiwara draws on this body of work to offer a bold rethinking of Asian American feminism that interrogates the heteronormativity at the center of Asian American racial and cultural formations.Using incisive case studies, Fujiwara traces how normativity operates across political and cultural life. Analyses of media responses to the 2021 Atlanta spa murders and immigrant rights advocacy demonstrate how appeals to respectability and “deservingness” can reproduce the very hierarchies they seek to resist. At the same time, readings of the television series Killing Eve and the novel Comfort Woman illuminate how cultural production exposes—and at times refuses—the limits of normative frameworks governing sexuality, family, and belonging.Throughout her analysis, Fujiwara reveals how heteronormativity is deeply entangled with white supremacy, nationalism, and neoliberal politics. These structures shape who is recognized as human, who is granted protection, and who remains vulnerable to violence and exclusion. By interrogating the politics of normativity, she offers a powerful framework for understanding race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary America.