Chinese Exotic – Modern Diasporic Femininity

Olivia Khoo is a Lecturer in Film at the University of New South Wales. She has published widely on Asian film and media.

• Introduction: The Chinese Exotic; I: Fold; 1. Folding Chinese Boxes: Sensing the Chinese Exotic; II: Cross Over; 2. Spies, Vamps and Women Warriors: Translating the Exotic into the Technics of Chinese Femininity; III: Ornament; 3. Ethnic Supplementarity and the Ornamental Text: Asian American and Asian Australian Diasporic Literary Production; IV: Region; 4. From the Chinese Exotic to the Asian Exotic: Critical Regionalism and Pop Culture Asianism; Conclusion: Heliotropic Manoeuvres; Notes; Filmography; Bibliography; Index.

With great sensitivity and originality, Olivia Khoo shows us how to read popular films, female movie stars, quotidian cultural artifacts, novels, and other 'Chinese exotic' phenomena in contemporary global circulation. To the representational politics of what she terms diaspora China, she has brought a notably fresh level of analytical finesse and imagination. -- Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University