Queer Kinship and Family Change in Taiwan

Interweaving the narratives of multiple family members, including mothers, fathers, and siblings of her queer and trans informants, Amy Brainer analyses the ways that families navigate their internal differences. Brainer looks across generational cohorts, with informants ranging in age from their twenties to their seventies.

"Brilliantly researched and elegantly written, Brainer’s study infuses the campaign for equality with a human flavor. We are treated to first-hand accounts of the pressures from coming out and carrying on the family, parenting and cross-generational conflicts, class normativity, and sibling relations. Anchored by Taiwan’s millennial turn, this timely and moving book unveils how integral natal families are to queer individuals’ personal fulfillment and aspiration for social change."  - Howard Chiang (author of After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China) "Brainer adds new insights about the ways that queer Asians, specifically Taiwanese, negotiate alternative sexualities and genders within a family context and how members of their families help in this negotiation.”  - Chong-suk Han (author of Geisha of a Different Kind: Race and Sexuality in Gayasian American) "A milestone in the understanding of queer kinship, getting family-of-origin experiences into its core, this book takes the reader through a fascinating travel into queer family lives while providing an insightful, decolonising questioning of current meanings of silence and disclosure, choice and responsibility." - Chiara Bertone (coeditor of Queerying Families of Origin) "Recommended." (Choice) WBEZ "Worldview" 'Same-Sex Marriage Legalized in Taiwan' interview with Amy Brainer (WBEZ "Worldview") "It is easy to understand why this book won the Ruth Benedict Prize for outstanding contributions to anthropology on LGBT topics: Brainer’s documentation of queer relationships in Taiwanese families successfully challenges the models that have long framed queer subjectivity as a process of individualization....Brainer’s analysis of queer possibilities across an interconnected life course raises important questions for scholars of gender and kinship." (Anthropology & Aging)

AMY BRAINER is an assistant professor of women's and gender studies and sociology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.