Best Gay Asian Erotica.

Best Gay Asian Erotica 

Edited by Joel B. Tan

Cleis Press, 252 pages, $14.95, paperback

In 1998, Joel B. Tan edited what was then hailed as the first anthology of its kind, Queer PAPI Porn: Gay Asian Erotica (PAPI stands for Philippine, Asian, Pacific Islander). One of his goals was to fight the stereotypes that have seemed to bedevil Asian men (at least in American culture): that they're "feminine, physically diminutive, and submissive." In this new collection, he seems more intent on celebrating the desirability of Asian males than on defending them from narrow-minded preconceptions. He also aims, as he states in his introduction, to "navigat[e] around exhausted formulas of erotic storytelling and nationalist themes." Despite the title of this collection and the photo of a beautiful young man on the cover, Tan delivers erotica that's a cut above the norm. Some stories from the first collection appear again, such as Virgil Vang's "Mimesis," in which a deaf man becomes involved with a highly unusual and intense theater group that engages is elaborate sexual rituals; and Jason Luz's "Scherzo for Cunanan," a tale inspired by the brief but deadly spree of Versace killer Andrew Cunanan. Tan notes in his introduction that many of the stories lack an obvious PAPI context. In John Tunui's "Liberty," for example, there's a heated, politically-charged sexual encounter between a black man and a blonde Frenchman. Tan also includes stories with characters who fall outside the mainstream of what is typically regarded as sexual desirability, such as a gay dwarf in Chen Lin's "A Hand in the Dark." This collection reminds us of just how varied the world of "color" can be. Under the rather expansive umbrella of "Asian," there's a large, diverse world of experience, and the writers assembled here take us down paths both familiar and new.