Queer historical fiction always feels particularly powerful to me because it’s the author saying we have always been here. It’s laying claim to the canon. It’s a tether to the past and all those who have come before you. It also tends to ask about intersectionality. By often taking place in significant historical moments–in this list, there are independence movements, occupations, racial segregations, and martial laws–it can explore how the characters are shaped by multiple sets of politics and identities.
My first adult novel, When They Burned the Butterfly, is about the rapid transformations of postcolonial Singapore in 1972–just a few years after independence in 1965–and the increasingly throttled Chinese secret societies who, in this alternate history, draw magic from gods. Specifically, the book follows a girl gang called Red Butterfly who follow a fire goddess, and the schoolgirl that becomes entangled with one of its leaders after the violent death of her mother.
It’s a coming-of-age and creation of an identity for both the nation and for Adeline, the lesbian schoolgirl, who loses her only parent but gets adopted into a found family and falls in love, even as the pressures of the underworld and the changing city threaten to take all that away, too. It’s a love letter to my home as much as it is a critique and an exploration of its survival anxiety; it’s also a nod to queer history and reclaiming the nation-building story, in a way.
I’m particularly interested in histories featuring queer Asian women — a trifold intersection that’s difficult to find. Even putting together this list required some excavating, as I realized I had to especially search for books that featured a wider range of settings and cultures.
Here are thirteen other works of historical fiction featuring bisexual, lesbian, and otherwise sapphic Asian characters, ascending through time, space, homeland, and diaspora.
Continue reading “13 Works of Sapphic Asian Historical Fiction by Wen-yi Lee”
