By exploring the figure of the sex worker as portrayed and represented in literature, films, and new media circulated within the United States, China, and Sinophone communities, Lily Wong's Transpacific Attachments uses a transpacific and translingual perspective to reconfigure the notion of Chineseness as an “affective structure” (p. 7) that is shifting, historically situated, and malleable. Investigating depictions of prostitutes in the transnational media as “transpacific affective laborers” (p. 15), this book challenges identity politics and its conventional ideas about national, ethnic, and linguistic attachments. Wong uses a wide range of theoretical approaches; she chooses the methodology of literary analysis throughout the book and provides close readings of five cases covering a broad historical sweep from the early twentieth century to the present day. Furthermore, she adopts Sarah Ahmed's theory of affects as a mobilization of emotion, which “not only represents social positionalities but also participates actively in the very...

You do not currently have access to this content.