Inside the Circle

Queer Culture and Activism in Northwest China

By Casey James Miller

Rutgers University Press

Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in northwest China, Casey James Miller offers a novel, compelling, and intimately personal perspective on Chinese queer culture and activism. In Inside the Circle: Queer Culture and Activism in Northwest China, Miller tells the stories of two courageous and dedicated groups of queer activists in the city of Xi’an: a grassroots gay men’s HIV/AIDS organization called Tong’ai and a lesbian women’s group named UNITE. Taking inspiration from “the circle,” a term used to imagine local, national, and global queer communities, Miller shows how everyday people in northwest China are taking part in queer culture and activism while also striving to lead traditionally moral lives in a rapidly changing society. The queer stories in this book broaden our understandings of gender and sexuality in contemporary China and show how taking global queer diversity seriously requires us to de-center Western cultural values, historical experiences, and theoretical perspectives.

There are many meaningful contributions throughout Inside the Circle, from its central findings to its smaller observations. The discussion of romantic/passionate versus companionate/familial love; the inclusion of Buddhist faith perspectives that are still rare in studies of queer China; the compassionate and critical analysis of how an organization grew, deteriorated, and was rebirthed/reimagined– these and more will stick with me long after reading this work.' Amy Brainer, author of Queer Kinship and Family Change in Taiwan

Inside the Circle challenges understandings of queer personhood in China. Tracing the struggles of queer activists in northwest China to reconcile their sexual identities with their deeply held beliefs about what it means to be a moral person, Miller convinces the reader with his rich ethnography that in postsocialist China, queer activism from the margins challenges reductive ideas about homonormativity, expands the public sphere without directly opposing state power, and helps us to imagine new forms of transnational solidarity. Lisa Rofel, author of Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture

CASEY JAMES MILLER is an assistant professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

List of Figures and Tables
1 Introduction: Queer Stories, Chinese Stories
2 The View from Inside the Circle: Queer Gender and Sexuality in Northwest China
3 “Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots”: Queer Love, Kinship, and Personhood
4 “Living in the Gray Zone”: Queer Activism and Civil Society
5 “Dying for Money”: Conflict and Competition among Queer Men’s NGOs
6 From Rainbow Flags to Mr. Gay World: Transnational Queer Culture and Activism
Conclusion
List of Names
Glossary of Chinese Characters
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

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