This presentation examines a collection of queer fiction entitled “Love Stories of Lesbian and Gay” published in Vietnam in the early millennium. Their publication coincided with the increasingly popular local usage of the transnational terms “gay” and “lesbian.” Scholars studying transnational issues have advanced different theoretical models concerning the global spread of LGBT identities and practices. One theory posits a logic of analogy whereby external difference is rendered internally continuous with local culture. Another model posits mutual complicity between global capital and the nation-form. Finally, a third theory posits that these identities signify an aspirational logic of temporal coevalness: a desire to be cosmopolitan and modern (see Cruz-Malave and Manalansan; D.Altman; and P. Jackson). In light of these theoretical models, this presentation asks the following questions: How does the prior collection of stories inflect the terms “gay” and “lesbian”? What kinds of cultural translations, affective yearnings or transnational imaginings can we discern about Vietnamese LGBT identities in the early millennium?
