Journal of American Studies, 42 (2008), 2, Page 1 of 1 f 2008 Cambridge University Press

Journal of American Studies, 42 (2008), 2. doi :10.1017/S0021875808005331

Celine Parreñas Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race : Performing Asian/American
Women on Screen and Scene (Durham and London : Duke University Press, 2007,
$23.95). Pp. 340. ISBN 978 0 8223 4033 1.
Celine Parreñas Shimizu discusses the representations of ‘‘Asian/American ’’
women in theatre and film ranging from Miss Saigon and Hollywood films to the
illegal stag films of the 1920s and 1930s, to present-day pornography and feminist
films. She offers examples of ‘‘ Asian/American ’’ women who appear to utilize
negative, hypersexual stereotypes in order to empower themselves and their
performances, including the crotch-grabbing dancers in Miss Saigon, the narrative
intervention of porn stars Asia Carrera and Annabel Chong via their websites, and
Hollywood actress Lucy Liu’s decision to tolerate stereotyping for the sake of future
power and control.
Shimizu’s account is compelling, as the subject of sexuality often is. Nonetheless,
its elision of historicity and locality is glaring in the context of its aims – to provide
an alternative perspective to the gender–race debate. Her choice of the slash over
the hyphen in the epithet ‘‘ Asian/American ’’ is significant. Rather than constructing
the ‘‘ Asian-American ’’ woman as one with a dual identity (which is by no means
easily characterized), the slash alludes to a subjectivity that is ‘‘either/or and also
both, ’’ allowing Shimizu to address non-American Asian actresses, such as Lea
Salonga (a Filipina) and Annabel Chong (a Singaporean), within the scope of her
argument, though she does not explore their subjectivities in any detail. Salonga’s
nationality as a non-American was an issue of contention when Miss Saigon moved
from the West End to Broadway. The Actors’ Equity Association had insisted that
casting priority be given to its (US) members. Hailing from the Philippines, the ex-
and to date only US colony, Salonga’s employment in a Broadway musical, adapted
from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, set during the Vietnam War, written by French
songwriters and produced by a British company, offers a multitude of cultural and
political readings that may potentially inform the gender and racial one.
Unfortunately, in Shimizu’s account, these Asian women become as collectively
undifferentiated as they do in the films and productions alleged to be portraying
them as such.
While the volume recognizes that perceptions need to be changed, it does not
question why, as a mode of address, female sexuality must be racialized, or why race
must be sexualized, in order to be represented at all. What are the historical and
institutional formations that compel both Anna May Wong and Lucy Liu, working
nearly a century apart, to have to intervene in such similar ways in the processes of
their (self-)representation ? These processes seem, over time, to have taken on dif-
ferent forms without any true alteration in substance.
University of Ulster FELICIA CHAN

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