2025

Book review of Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China, by Jia Tan. The Journal of Asian Studies 84.3 (August 2025): 845-847.

https://doi.org/10.1215/00219118-11827346

2022

“Grief, Translation, and the ‘Asian American Woman’ in Hong Kong.” Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature 19, no. 1 (March 2022): 224-235.

Abstract: This article draws on Judith Butler's theories of violence and grief in order to outline a self-reflexive narrative of teaching and speaking about the Atlanta shootings of March 2021 as a queer and feminist studies scholar of Japanese studies in Hong Kong. The article briefly explains how teaching about this occurrence of anti-Asian violence in East Asia might lead to important discussions of multiple imperialisms within/around Asia, while providing background on the broader potential of Asian American studies for pedagogical contexts within Asia. However, through a description of the author's own coming into being as a racialized, gendered subject in the act of teaching about the Atlanta shootings in Hong Kong, the focus is on a highly particular account of how grief and vulnerability might offer forms of political solidarity that are not defined by roles as distinct subjects belonging to recognizable groups and communities.

https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9646012

2021

“Ekuni Kaori’s Tears in the Night: The Brilliance of Queer Readings for Japanese Literary Studies.” Journal of Japanese Studies 47, no. 1 (2021): 1-27. Honorable Mention for 2021 Kenneth B. Pyle Prize for Best Article.

Abstract: In the late 1980s, Japanese literature experienced the rise of a generation of women writers associated with girls' culture, marking a dramatic move toward gender equality in the literary establishment. Instead of emphasizing the feminist nature of texts by Ekuni Kaori (1964–), a writer of this generation, I argue for the need to focus on the failures and limitations of her texts. Moreover, I suggest that queer readings of failure and desperate love experienced by heartbroken women in Ekuni's works open up a new space of interpretation for women writers, offering unexpected lessons of survival in precarious times.

https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2021.0006

2020

“Ogawa Yōko and the Horrific Femininities of Daily Life.” Japanese Language and Literature 54, no. 2 (Fall 2020): 551-582.

Abstract: In Ogawa Yōko’s (b. 1962) writing from the late 1980’s and 1990’s, female narrators often revel in the fantastical beauty of youthful masculinities, while they themselves cannot escape the disgusting disorder of feminized domestic spaces. First, I read death and violence in kitchens depicted in the story collection Revenge (1998) to show how Ogawa rewrites this space associated with the housewife and her duties as one of horrific possibilities overturning idealized images of domesticity. Next, building on earlier readings of food, I argue that spectacles of sweetness—cakes, jam, and ice cream desserts—play a particularly crucial role in articulating female desire and violence, such as with the earlier works “Pregnancy Diary” (1991) and Sugar Time (1991). Returning to Revenge, I observe how “sweet” images appear in scenes of violence to outline how female homosocial gazes reflect a constant engagement with femininities seen in other women, particularly those marked by the transgression of anger and murderous desire. I end by considering ways in which Ogawa’s self-reflexive depiction of the woman writer in Revenge playfully problematizes the “mad” fantasies of women who write.

https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2020.97 (open access)

“Building a Queer Feminist Life: Research and Community across Borders” (クィア・フェミニストの人生を築くということ: 越境する研究とコミュニティ). Waseda Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences 8 (October 2020): 491-502. Published in Japanese.

https://www.waseda.jp/flas/rilas/assets/uploads/2020/10/491-502-Grace.pdf (open access)

“Gender, Manga, and Anime.” In Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture, edited by Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton, 311-319. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Abstract: Research on gender and sexuality has formed a core part of anime and manga studies. Beginning in the 1990s, the shōjo, or girl, has been a reoccurring point of interest that English-language scholars have critiqued as a symptom of Japanese consumer culture but also elevated for possibly representing feminist agency and strength. Appearing slightly later, scholarship on otaku, or fans, argues against overly simplistic condemnation of fans of manga and anime (particularly men), explaining otaku consumption habits in terms of sophisticated or even radical engagement with cultural texts and narratives. Arguably, many of the greatest contributions have been made within the field of shōjo manga (girls’ comics) studies and its subfield of boys’ love or BL studies. Such scholarship considers the potential of reading communities built largely around female cultural producers and readers, beginning in prewar Japan with girls’ magazines, reaching new heights with the now-classic shōjo manga of the 1970s, and continuing to the present day with the transnational phenomenon of fujoshi, or female fans of boys’ love, as a major object of study.

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315179582

“Negativity and Hope, or Addressing Gender and Race in Japanese Studies.” Gender and Sexuality: Journal of the Center for Gender Studies, ICU 15 (March 2020): 67-81.

https://subsite.icu.ac.jp/cgs/images/08Grace%20En-Yi%20TING.pdf (open access)

2018

“The Desire and Disgust of Sweets: Consuming Femininities through Shōjo Manga.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 54 (2018): 52-74.

Abstract: This article examine images of sweets—cakes, cookies, and parfaits—in texts by artists Hagio Moto (b. 1949) and Yoshinaga Fumi (b. 1971) in order to trace an unremarkable history of shōjo manga. My analysis suggests that feminist scholars of Japanese girls' culture have largely avoided emphasizing conventional femininities circulated through many shōjo manga; instead, they focus on a narrative concerning the subversive qualities of the genre due to its rejection of gender and sexual norms. Describing representations of sweetness in terms of desire and disgust, I reflect upon possibilities for feminist perspectives that simultaneously allow for both pleasure and critique with the everyday consumption of shōjo manga.

http://doi.org/10.1353/jwj.2018.0010 (open access)