As a broad category of identity, “transgender” has given life to a vibrant field of academic research since the 1990s. Yet the Western origins of the field have tended to limit its cross-cultural scope. Howard Chiang proposes a new paradigm for doing transgender history in which geopolitics assumes central importance. Defined as the antidote to transphobia, transtopia challenges a minoritarian view of transgender experience and makes room for the variability of transness on a historical continuum.

Against the backdrop of the Sinophone Pacific, Chiang argues that the concept of transgender identity must be rethought beyond a purely Western frame. At the same time, he challenges China-centrism in the study of East Asian gender and sexual configurations. Chiang brings Sinophone studies to bear on trans theory to deconstruct the ways in which sexual normativity and Chinese imperialism have been produced through one another. Grounded in an eclectic range of sources—from the archives of sexology to press reports of intersexuality, films about castration, and records of social activism—this book reorients anti-transphobic inquiry at the crossroads of area studies, medical humanities, and queer theory. Timely and provocative, Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific highlights the urgency of interdisciplinary knowledge in debates over the promise and future of human diversity.

"Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific starts off with the deceptively simple premise of reorienting the way transness is understood beyond purely Western notions of transgender, but unfolds as a monumental and engaging work that challenges our historical understandings of gender and sexual variance. Following their award-winning monograph After Eunuchs (2018), Howard Chiang’s latest work continues to bridge and set new benchmarks in the areas of transgender studies and Sinophone studies, and is an innovative and timely contribution to scholarly understandings of transness, queerness, and Chinese cultural history." - Feminist Encounters

"A dizzyingly ambitious book that wrestles with asymmetries of disciplinary forms and historiographical evidence amidst ongoing geopolitical upheaval in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC…Chiang brings together oft-segregated field formations — Sinophone studies and transgender studies — to stage deft and illuminating readings of the transtopic imaginaire….Transtopia is thus metalepsis: a transgression of historical grammars of cause and effect. Gender difference is not “discovered” in geopolitics; rather it founds the very forms of its emergence in histories of sexuality. That may well be the signature intervention of this book, as it demands new sight lines for the script of trans historiography." - GLQ

"In Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific, Howard Chiang brings LGBTQ experiences in the Sinophone world to the forefront of trans studies, challenging both the Western framing of transgender and Chinese-centrism in the study of East Asian gender and sexuality. Contributing to both global trans studies and regional studies through its sharp geopolitical focus, the book broadens understandings of trans experiences and creates space for imagining different trans futures." - LSE Review of Books

"Chiang’s monograph is a methodologically ambitious, meticulously argued, and paradigm-shifting work of scholarship in twenty-first-century queer China/Sinophone studies." - Journal of the History of Sexuality

"By focusing on peripheral Sinophone LGBTQ communities, Chiang is able to challenge geopolitical hegemonies and consider transgender geopolitics from an entirely new perspective....Transtopia serves as a method to navigate the challenging landscape of today's transgender politics and work towards social and political justice that is not restricted by gender identity or geographical location." - Science for the People

"A remarkable contribution to interdisciplinary fields of cultural history, (trans)gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, and area studies focusing on Sinophone Pacific areas. Demonstrating several examples for doing different types of history, this book enriches a broader set of conversations in the theory of history beyond its focus on gender variability. Chiang licenses a timely solution to the "narrative problem" in the emerging field of transgender studies." - Journal of Asian Studies