Preface  ix

Introduction: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy  1

1. The Law of Kinship: Lawrence v. Texas and the Emergence of Queer Liberalism  23

2. The Structure of Kinship: The Art of Waiting in The Book of Salt and Happy Together  58

3. The Language of Kinship: Transnational Adoption and Two Mothers in First Person Plural  93

4. The Prospect of Kinship: Transnational Adoption and Racial Reparation (with Shinhee Han, Ph.D.)  138

5. The Feeling of Kinship: Affect and Language in History and Memory  166

Notes  199

Bibliography  225

Index  239

“This is a brave book that demands its reader rethink the ties that bind.”—Lily Cho, Reviews in Cultural Theory

“[E]xpand[s] the political horizons of feeling and cultural politics with exciting complexity . . . brilliant.”—Sarah Cefai, Cultural Studies Review

“Eng’s most exciting contribution to queer studies . . . consists in his
transformative reading of the landmark court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). . . . As The Feeling of Kinship elegantly demonstrates, a queer liberalism that places faith in a future of legislated equality risks obscuring the present of those relegated to the waiting room of history.”—S. Pearl Brilmyer, GLQ

“The Feeling of Kinship is a significant contribution to queer studies, and black cultural studies more generally.”—David Marriott, Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

“The Feeling of Kinship will be of interest to a wide range of readers, especially those working in Asian American studies, queer studies, area studies, postcolonial theory, and psychoanalysis. Its adeptness at thinking through the relay among individual, family, race, and nation is a welcome addition and one that promises to be an important touchstone for years to come.”—Benjamin Kahan, Journal of Asian American Studies

“In Eng's story of belonging and excluding within and without our national borders, we are met with the delicious rush and overwhelming task of making it count. To read alongside a scholar and writer like Eng, then, is not only a source of pleasure and inspiration. To read Eng is to attune oneself to a hopeful hunch that not-forgetting is an act of caring. Whatever our numbers, we are better for being in the company of The Feeling of Kinship.” —Vivian L. Huang, Criticism

“This is a brave book that demands its reader rethink the ties that bind.”—Lily Cho, Reviews in Cultural Theory

“[E]xpand[s] the political horizons of feeling and cultural politics with exciting complexity . . . brilliant.”—Sarah Cefai, Cultural Studies Review

“Eng’s most exciting contribution to queer studies . . . consists in his
transformative reading of the landmark court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). . . . As The Feeling of Kinship elegantly demonstrates, a queer liberalism that places faith in a future of legislated equality risks obscuring the present of those relegated to the waiting room of history.”—S. Pearl Brilmyer, GLQ

“The Feeling of Kinship is a significant contribution to queer studies, and black cultural studies more generally.”—David Marriott, Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

“The Feeling of Kinship will be of interest to a wide range of readers, especially those working in Asian American studies, queer studies, area studies, postcolonial theory, and psychoanalysis. Its adeptness at thinking through the relay among individual, family, race, and nation is a welcome addition and one that promises to be an important touchstone for years to come.”—Benjamin Kahan, Journal of Asian American Studies

“In Eng's story of belonging and excluding within and without our national borders, we are met with the delicious rush and overwhelming task of making it count. To read alongside a scholar and writer like Eng, then, is not only a source of pleasure and inspiration. To read Eng is to attune oneself to a hopeful hunch that not-forgetting is an act of caring. Whatever our numbers, we are better for being in the company of The Feeling of Kinship.” —Vivian L. Huang, Criticism

“The Feeling of Kinship is a timely examination of the persistence of racial and national differentiation within the privileged investments of ‘queer liberalism’ in its particular focus on the rights to affective union in domesticity, privacy, and family. Here, as elsewhere, David L. Eng demonstrates his gifts of critical precision and elegant presentation.”—Lisa Lowe, University of California, San Diego

“Spanning psychoanalysis, law, and aesthetics, and reading richly and with passion, David L. Eng's The Feeling of Kinship looks at transnational adoption as an exemplary scene of contemporary intimacy in the United States. This is a fearless book that knows and feels what it means to have to defend oneself from the ‘liberal’ place in which one lives; what it means racially, sexually, and legally to have to be defensive in a nation that identifies itself with freedom.”—Lauren Berlant, author of The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought