Falling Short: On Alternative Fullness, Queerness, & Afterparties.

Abstract

Asian Americans are both the forever foreigner and model minority. I am not Asian American, but a queer Asian settling in America. In both diaspora and queerness, one is confronted by the standards of dominant culture. The Global Majority and our fiction are not exempt from the essentializing violence of the global north’s White cishet cultural dominance. In my fiction then I re-imagine, informed by queer and transpacific theory. I hope to redefine what success or fullness might look like when freed from dominant culture. In both my exploration of theory and craft I seek what I call alternative fullness. Toward this, this essay moves from the personal lyric essay to an analysis of Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties: Stories. Exploring alternative fullness in this queer Asian American short story collection, I draw from Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, Cathy Schlund-Vials’ War, Genocide, and Justice, Stephen Sohn’s Inscrutable Belongings and Joshua Chambers-Letson’s After the Party. This hybrid essay melds this inquiry with an account of my own migration, relationships, and familial connections to re-imagine my personal alternative fullness as a queer diasporic writer of the Global Majority.