Surface Relations

“Vivian L. Huang’s Surface Relations is a brilliant contribution to Asian American studies and performance studies scholarship. In dazzlingly original readings of Asian diasporic visual art, literature, and performance, Huang identifies an aesthetics of inscrutability (and other related racialized affects of withholding, distance, obfuscation, flatness, and deferral) which produce modes of relationality and sociality that refuse and refute model minority respectability. Instead these ‘surface aesthetics’ strategically disidentify with stereotypes of the ‘inscrutable Asian’ to provide powerful alternative models of the political. At this moment when anti-Asian racism and yellow peril discourse are more pernicious than ever, this is timely, compelling, and vitally necessary work.” - Gayatri Gopinath, author of Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora

“An engaging and compelling book, Surface Relations offers a refreshing and critical outlook on the racialization and production of stereotypes of Asian Americans as silent, passive, untrustworthy—inscrutable. Taking on these entrenched representations, Vivian L. Huang convincingly reformulates the discourse of inscrutability as a productive strategic force by intersecting it with feminist, queer, and trans studies.” - Susette Min, author of Unnamable: The Ends of Asian American Art

"This book provides an overflowing fountain of information on Asian American inscrutability. The artworks that are analyzed are provocative and eye-opening, and the depth of understanding that Huang has for the subject matter is unsurpassable. Overall, Surface Relations is the ideal text for anybody who wants to further their specific research on queer and feminist Asian American artistic expression." - Shandy Frey, ARLIS/NA Reviews

"As the book unfolds, Huang’s writing becomes a layering of surfaces, a series of pages where literature, art, and performance vibrate with Asian American studies, performance studies, and queer of colour critique. Ultimately, the book offers a theory of Asian American aesthetic surfaces as grounds for new forms of relating to one another." - Courtney Lau, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas

"I recommend this book for its innovative methodology and meticulous analysis, which significantly enhance our understanding of the role of aesthetics in the negotiation of identity and power. Viewing Asian American identity and expression through a queer lens, this book distinguishes itself with pioneering case studies and insightful interpretations. It not only broadens the scope of Asian American studies but also enriches our comprehension of how cultural productions can challenge and transform societal norms." - Meng Yi, Visual Studies

"Surface Relations is a gift for its dazzling insights and model of generous engagement. . . . Surface Relations is a powerful distillation of this reminder into the world-making potential of  inscrutability. - Chad Shomura, American Literary History

"At this point, this review is unlikely to spark more excitement for Huang’s monograph debut than has already been generated . . . but, to put it bluntly, the hype is deserved. . . . Huang has set a new standard for Asian American performance studies, one equally transformative in its examinations of aesthetics and politics." - Takeo Rivera, Theatre Journal

"Triangulating queerness as relation to form and racialization as inscrutable queerings of surface, Huang’s Surface Relations sparks – as all generative and generous interventions do – richly resonant questions that open outward to multiple unknowns and the relations therein." - Christine Xiong, Performance Research

"Like the creative works it examines, this book beautifully lingers in the complexities of Asian American life, despite who or what might (not) register it, working toward a counterdiscourse with and for those who are flattened by racialized surfacing." - Phuong T. Vuong, Journal of Asian American Studies

"A masterclass in sustained close-readings and theoretically expansive storytelling of how artists, writers, and performers mobilize racial forms of inscrutability to navigate the majoritarian world, Surface Relations o­ffers new directions to Asian American feminist and queer aesthetic and literary criticism that prompt readers to relinquish our collective aspirations for social, political, and institutional visibility and recognition, and to look and work toward vanishing points of our own becomings and relationalities on the horizon." - Kelly I. Chung, Art Journal

"A valuable and engaged work of cultural criticism that is deserving of the buzz it has received in the past few years." - Max Casey, Film-Philosophy

“Surface Relations, with all of its scholastic rigor, does not just build an intellectual understanding of neoliberal capitalism’s intersection with race, gender, and sexuality but offers a chance to feel how these constructs overlap upon your surface as they permeate your interior self.”