Review of: Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia, Katherine Mezur and Emily Wilcox (eds) (2020)
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 355 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-47207-455-6, p/bk, $39.95
This article examines notions of “sisterhood” by focusing on an all-women's lion dance company called Gund Kwok, based in Boston's Chinatown. Gund Kwok, which limits membership to those who identify as female and Asian American, provides a space for women to perform this traditional male-only dance style. Company members have created a community of “sisters” to address layers of gendered and racial oppression. Despite concerns that scholars have raised about how community formations, such as sisterhoods, can be overly idealistic and potentially harmful, this study highlights the role of sisterhood in Gund Kwok and the important functions it serves for the group. It argues that Gund Kwok is a diverse community that draws from the ideology of sisterhood as a way of articulating Asian American cultural identity outside the scope of Western cultural frameworks and the dance's patriarchal tradition.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.