A View from the Bottom

"Little or none of the scholarship around the sexual position of the bottom has accurately articulated it as a sexual practice with the capacity to rewrite both shame and vulnerability... [Nguyen] sets himself a part from today's contemporary queer canon of scholars." -- John Erickson * Lambda Literary Review * "Using tools not of the master's house, Nguyen offers a pioneering study of Asian American gender and sexuality with reverberating tools that transform our theory and praxis." -- Margaret Rhee * Amerasia Journal * "Communication researchers who are interested in critical racial studies, cultural studies, and queer theory should find [A View from the Bottom] relevant and inspiring." -- Lik Sam Chan * International Journal of Communication * "The book is written with nuance and theoretical sophistication, in a clear and lively style that is at once personable and playful.... A View from the Bottom is certainly well positioned to provoke new conversations-even realignments of boundary-between gay studies and trans studies." -- Helen Hok-Sze Leung * TSQ * "A View from the Bottom... provokes a political recalibration that aligns bottomhood, femininity, and race in tender union.... Nguyen bravely models a praxis of vulnerability that we rarely encounter in academic writing, especially around the fraught and fragile imbrications of race, desire, and power" -- Uri McMillan * GLQ * "Nguyen's insights allow us to view the bottom as an opportunity for creativity, a position of receptiveness that affords agency and pleasure, and an occasion to build a queer utopic space that offers unbounded social relations with others." -- Christopher B. Patterson * MELUS * "This monograph is a generative work for scholars who center comparative racialization and queer diaspora, as well as gender, sexuality, and media representation more broadly. Nguyen deftly engages numerous conversations in queer studies, film studies, Asian American studies, and queer of color critique." -- Jonathan Branfman * Sexualities * "A View from the Bottom is a critical and insightful read for anyone interested in media studies, particularly for people interested in the performance and representation of sexual and racial minorities." -- Min Joo Lee * Liminalities * "Nguyen's book is a welcomed effort to deal with the thorny contradictions that arise when scholarship of advocacy meets the unwieldy reality of sexual desire. Future projects dealing with race and sexual representations, particularly those of gay Asian and Asian American subjectivities, must confront this question and reckon with the insights in Nguyen's study." -- Hao Jun Tam * Journal of Asian American Studies *

Nguyen Tan Hoang is Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College. He is also a videomaker whose works include K.I.P, Forever Bottom!, PIRATED! and look_im_azn. His videos have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, The Getty Center, and the Centre Pompidou.

Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. The Rise, and Fall, of a Gay Asian American Porn Star 29 2. Relfections on an Asian Bottom 71 3. The Lover's "Gorgeous Ass" 111 4. The Politics of Starch 151 Conclusion 193 Notes 207 Bibliography 253 Videography 271 Index 275