Eric C. Wat – författare

Winner of the Outstanding Achievement in History Award for 2023, presented by the Association for Asian American StudiesDefying the AIDS epidemic, Asian American activists sparked a sex-affirming movementThe AIDS crisis reshaped life in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s and radicalized a new generation of queer Asian Americans with a broad vision of health equity and sexual freedom. Even amid the fear and grief, Asian American AIDS activists created an infrastructure of care that centered the most stigmatized and provided diverse immigrant communities with the health resources and information they needed. Without a formal blueprint, these young organizers often had to be creative and agitational, and together they reclaimed the pleasure in sex and fostered inclusivity, regardless of HIV status.A community memoir, Love Your Asian Body connects the deeply personal with the uncompromisingly political in telling the stories of more than thirty Asian American AIDS activists. In those early years of the epidemic, these activists became caregivers, social workers, nurses, researchers, and advocates for those living with HIV. And for many, the AIDS epidemic sparked the beginning of their continued work to build multiracial coalitions and confront broader systemic inequities. Detailing the intertwined realities of race and sexuality in AIDS activism, Love Your Asian Body offers a vital portrait of a movement founded on joy.

Winner of the Outstanding Achievement in History Award for 2023, presented by the Association for Asian American StudiesDefying the AIDS epidemic, Asian American activists sparked a sex-affirming movementThe AIDS crisis reshaped life in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s and radicalized a new generation of queer Asian Americans with a broad vision of health equity and sexual freedom. Even amid the fear and grief, Asian American AIDS activists created an infrastructure of care that centered the most stigmatized and provided diverse immigrant communities with the health resources and information they needed. Without a formal blueprint, these young organizers often had to be creative and agitational, and together they reclaimed the pleasure in sex and fostered inclusivity, regardless of HIV status.A community memoir, Love Your Asian Body connects the deeply personal with the uncompromisingly political in telling the stories of more than thirty Asian American AIDS activists. In those early years of the epidemic, these activists became caregivers, social workers, nurses, researchers, and advocates for those living with HIV. And for many, the AIDS epidemic sparked the beginning of their continued work to build multiracial coalitions and confront broader systemic inequities. Detailing the intertwined realities of race and sexuality in AIDS activism, Love Your Asian Body offers a vital portrait of a movement founded on joy.

In this unique oral history, gay Asian Americans talk frankly about their struggle for self-determination and independence. For the first time, in their own words, pioneers in the Los Angeles movement discuss the gay scene in Southern California and the development of a distinctly Asian American identity. Despite its size, until recently the gay Asian American community in Los Angeles was fragmented and marginalized. Gay Asian men separated into their own ethnic cliques and preferred whites as sexual partners. Eric C. Wat convincingly demonstrates that these patterns are legacies of both a racialized hierarchy of desire and racial exclusion from the mainstream gay community. Using a cultural studies lens to interpret the rich oral narratives he collected, Wat shows how a dominant sexual ideology can influence our desires and contradict our memories. He follows the development of 'specialty' bars that at once reinforced this dominant ideology and highlighted its contradictions. By documenting the founding of the first gay Asian organization in Southern California (Asian/Pacific Lesbians and Gays [A/PLG]), the author powerfully portrays the ways gay Asian men confronted these contradictions publicly and struggled to reconcile them as they fashioned a coherent identity and community based on both their race and sexuality. Wat's analysis returns gay Asian men to the center of their lives and celebrates the power of individuals working collectively to define their desires and to change what is unjust around them. As living history, their voices are valuable and overdue.