Customer Reviews

The Rice Queen Diaries

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Part autobiography, part titillating sex novel, part scholarly treatise, "The Rice Queen Diaries: A Memoir" deals with a subject that is obviously very close to the heart of the author: being a gay white male attracted primarily to young-looking Asian men, which is a "rice queen" in gay slang.

The writer traces his attraction chronologically, from his early years in a small Canadian town outside Vancouver, which was best known as being the location shoot for low-budget American films. It was also closest to the site of a Japanese internment camp during World War II, which the author found out his uncle had a hand in running. He conjectures that this knowledge may have triggered an early curiousity about Asians, but his own budding sexuality was solely responsible for his attraction to them. After relocating to the larger city of Vancouver, he is able to more openly pursue his interests as a gay man, and becomes involved in one of the "Long Yang" clubs, designed for those attracted to gay Asian men. Having already had many encounters with young men from various East Asian countries, he then becomes the proverbial "kid in a candy store" when he takes an extended vacation in Thailand and Vietnam, where he eventually realizes that the numerous sexual partners he has are the result of economic transactions born of the difference between the cultures of the individuals involved.

For those wanting more information than his personal observations, the author includes numerous references to scholarly works on the culture of countries he visits, as well as psychological studies concerning the Interracial atrractions involved. He also makes a realistic assessment of his own behavior in such interactions, and doesn't like what he sees. By the time he is halfway through a later working visit to Thailand, he greatly curtails his sexual encounters, spending more time socializing with other expatriates, which he suggests left him open to find the one individual with whom he is currently partnered.

The book was interesting to me, now five years removed from a three year relationship with a slightly younger man from Taiwan. The balance of scholarly analysis and retelling of the author's exploits make it difficult to keep the book as one cohesive work, but the author seems to strike an ideal balance to make the book of interest to readers, regardless of whether you share the type of attraction discussed or perhaps are the subject of it yourself. I'll give it four stars out of five.

By MARK V. ROSE, Author of BANGKOK, OH BOY!
Daniel Gawthrop's Rice Queen Diaries is more than a memoir. Perhaps confession would be more apt. The largest section reveals sexual encounters and interactions between himself, a farang (Thai for foreigner) sex tourist from Vancouver, Canada and a barrage of interesting Southeast Asian men. But here and there throughout the book, the author's keen intellect catches up with his libido, incorporating fascinating, and very welcome cultural, anthropological, historical and sociological observations and information.
Exploring his obsessions with "Rice Queendom," Gawthrop is generous and honest in his revelations. For the un-initiated, or if one doesn't know, although considered a pejorative by some, a "rice queen" is a gay westerner who delights in and seeks Asian men. Gawthrop's passion is king-sized.
Early in the book, Gawthrop tells of his boyhood crush on Bruce Lee, how as a ten-year-old he even took up judo to be like the sexy kung fu artist. It didn't take long before he realized he wanted less to be Bruce Lee than to have him.
Sent to a private school in the ninth grade, Gawthrop pleasantly discovers that many of the students were kids from Chinese immigrant parents. He witnessed how one of them, "Jackson," was given a hazing one night by four, boozed-up, white 12th grade jocks. Lights out, the older boys surrounded his bed in the dorm and held him down while the other boys in the room feigning sleep, watched what turned out to be a kind of erotic initiation rite. Then all five, Jackson included, smoked cigarettes and joked. It left a lasting memory on the impressionable young Gawthrop.
Getting past such reflective, childhood experiences, Gawthrop then tells how he went to Vancouver in his early twenties where he experienced the lustful pangs and pining of a young, adult gay man. He moves into Vaseline Towers and his tale begins to take force. In "Hongcouver," the author visits the bars and baths, experiencing abundant sex with a variety of men--mostly Asian. He calls his attraction to them "yellow fever" and, indeed, it does seem at times to be an ailment! Woven into the highly spiced account is a succinct, fascinating background of the Chinese immigrant presence in Western Canada. They, like the migrant Chinese who came to California, built the trans-continental railroads. Such moments of respite give a welcome breather to the rampant sex--one may even say an official pardon.
The author goes to Bangkok, works for a major English language Thai newspaper and vacations in Pattaya, Chiang Mai and Vietnam. At that point, he becomes almost a slave to his obsessions.
The Rice Queen Diaries strikes me as a sometimes sad but authentic exposure of an alarming descent into a spiral of never-ending searching to quell one's sexual appetite.
Like Gawthrop, I've lived and worked in Thailand and was reminded of the temptations and dangers of sexual escape in a foreign country where the potential to besot is available 24/7. Add to this the temporary relief of limitless icy cold beers to deal with the heat and humidity, increasing the fantasy that one may be in a tropical paradise.
In the last short sections, Corruption of the Heart and Coming Home, the author faces approaching middle-age and the startling recognition of his capacity for a kind of racism. Gawthrop defines it well: the treatment of an entire group of people as one's own personal playpen. Fortunately, after three years of bedding down with countless men, many of them impoverished and problematic, to satisfy a voracious sexual appetite, and then "in one way or another" heartlessly casting them aside, the author allows himself to fall in love with Lalune. A migrant worker from Burma, Lalune has a cherubic face, twinkling brown eyes and a personality that is simple, uncomplicated and earnest.
Although he had half-heartedly attempted a number of short-lived, serous relationships with Thai lovers--some of whom because of economic depravation, exercised disappointing, exploitive, fiscal and monetary maneuvers, it is a welcome moment when at age thirty-eight, the jaded man no longer expecting to find love, finally lets love in. It is even more satisfying when he commits to an enduring partnership. He starts the difficult immigration process of sponsoring and bringing Lalune to Canada. The reader is left to wonder if the admirable wish is ever realized, but that will require another diary to look forward to. In Rice Queen Diaries, this scant moment comes almost too late in the book, but getting there, although frustrating at times, is well worth it.
My Bangkok, Oh Boy! reveals a similar involvement between Mat, a horny farang and a handsome Thai man, comparable discomforting financial transactions between them, and the perils and rewards of bi-cultural, long-distance relationships. Although Mat is not referred to as a "Rice Queen," after reading Gawthrop, one can say he certainly qualifies. Bangkok, Oh Boy! depicts a few sexual escapades that parallel Gawthrop's East/West saga, but by comparison with his vast chronicle of sex, my unapologetically horny central character seems chaste and unblemished in that department. But, Mat shares some of the unconscious sexual racism Gawthrop briefly explores, and comes to face it full force in concluding chapters. In any case, Gawthrop rings very familiar bells.
Rice Queen Diaries is a highly recommended read. Together with Rafaelito Sy's Potato Queen, Gambone's Beijing, Sulayman K's Bilal's Bread and Kadushin's Wonderlands, it is a welcome addition to a growing and increasingly necessary genre of West meets East.
Mark V. Rose, Author BANGKOK, OH BOY! atripress@aol.com

After reading the editorial and Amazon reviews, I had high hopes that this book would provide thoughtful insight from a unique perspective. His narrative reveals more about his partners than about himself and ultimately I found myself more interested in the people he came into contact with than in him. The closest he gets to "insight" is by providing commentary on other writings rather than commentary on his own assumptions, motivations and experiences. In fact, he uses the word "entitlement" for the first time on page 241, with only 10 pages left to the end of the book, and then retreats into the same strategy of emotional distancing by telling someone else's story and quoting someone else's text (an appropriation that itself can be considered colonialist). He spends more time presenting himself as the exception to the rice queen stereotype (thereby leaving the stereotype untouched), rather than considering how he may be perpetuating the stereotype himself.

I was glad to see that he didn't spend too much time on "white guilt", but would have loved to see a broader range of emotions- about himself- exhibited in the book. I would have loved to see him struggle more, either by redefining and reclaiming the Rice Queen label or by talking about the inner conflict of shame/pride/delight/frustration of falling in love outside your race. He also describes each of his individual relationships and encounters as if there were no common themes to how he entered into and broke them off. He also seems to differentiate the class/power difference between his (younger, poor)Asian and (sometimes older, sometimes more affluent) Asian-Canadian partners as if to dismantle or excuse himself from the Rice Queen stereotype.

In short, his analysis lacked personalization and evaluation. There was a striking difference between the First Person narrative and Third Person analysis, thereby putting a greater (and artificial) distance between himself and the stereotype. In those few passages where he does acknowledge his own "racist behavior", he does so in passing. This could have been a whole chapter unto itself. His narrative proved to be more a description of the Rice Queen phenomenon, and not an honest, reflective evaluation of the good, the bad and the ugly of his experience of the phenomenon.

My recommendations would be that he not depend on quotes from other writers to express his feelings (there is a certain entitlement that comes from this type of emotional distancing) and that he write an entire book based on the last paragraph of page 241, the one paragraph that contained personal narrative, personal analysis and personal evaluation.

This is a "diary" with footnotes. Reflections footnoted are thoughts reformed, scrubbed to perfection before being presented. So "The Rice Queen Diaries" offers readers an exploration of sexual attraction and self-discovery, but without the accidental honesty, the fragmentary nature of a true, real-time diary, those messy shards of broken glass that refract instead of reflect, offering abstractions that lure the reader (and more importantly the diarist) closer to the truth than any polished mirror. But the desire here is race-based, a topic as challenging as it is intriguing, one rarely reviewed in gay culture, and when it is, often sanitized through academia. So even if caution is the only approach available, this is still a book of participation. The author's erotic explorations are loaded with subconscious colonial ambition; it's hard not to imagine him, pith helmet atilt, typing away about trysts with young Asian men. But that's only a surface reading -this is a determinedly self-conscious sex-tour. If he does indeed wear that hat it's a purposeful dunce cap. Daniel Gawthrop isn't looking forward, toward the next sweaty escapade, in his book, but backwards, seriously seeking out what ignited this delirious dive, sent him tumbling until, submerged in a jungle-like bathhouse world of active stereotypes, his cute "houseboy" bites the hand that feeds, literally. Nothing ruins a vacation so much as the sight of your own blood.

This is a ten-year survey of obsession, from the emerging sexuality of a Vancouver boyhood to full-blown racial cruising in Toronto. As his preference for Asian men takes hold Gawthrop notices that certain automatic boundaries and assumptions apply to relationships between gay Caucasian and gay Asian men. As this psychological arena crystallizes, he has love affairs in and with Thailand; he moves there after his first visit. Though the various sexual sub-and-not-so-sub-cultures of Thailand are relatively well-known, Gawthrop expounds on them with a definitive amount of new insight. Plus his chapter on Vietnam is a marvelous bit of actual reporting -it's unlikely you'll read elsewhere of cruising beneath Communist flags at a swimming pool in Ho Chi Mihn City.

Well-turned prose and a breezy attitude toward sex makes this book a quick read, almost too quick; rather matter-of-fact observations deserve closer attention, specifically the fetishistic treatment of his lovers. Too many lithe brown fingers mystically caress, too many rose-petal lips purse throughout that, even if stereotypes are recognized and condemned under the rubric of socio-economic injustice, I can't help but wonder if friendship and love forged with the total recognition of such exploitation might not just be a more canny type of exploitation. Then again, what discussion of race isn't a total minefield? Well this one is a minefield laced with footnotes. And I found them a wee bit defensive, a way to fortify an observation with someone else's authoritative-sounding opinion. Quotes from Asian sources are offered as well, which makes even better mortar. In fact, I think I'll do the same thing. I'd like to amend this review by calling for a second opinion as well. Someone from Thailand, please. Let's hear the voice behind the smile oft described in "The Rice Queen Diaries." It might offer praise, condemnation or added insight. Though who knows, we might just hear one long, frustrated scream.

Previously published in Books To Watch Out For, '05

The danger of writing autobiography is that you can reveal a lot more than you realize. In this case, we find a vain, self-centered man with little self-awareness who merely recounts his travels in the world of rice. There's a good book to be written about this subject, but this isn't it.

No one seems to really discuss race ,ethnicity, and inter-racial relationships openly in western gay society or mainstream media, (except when it comes to blaming African Americans for the passing of the anti gay marriage Prop 8 in Nov. 2008)

That's why I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued by Daniel Gawthrop's memoir "The Rice Queen Diaries" what I thought would be an interesting look when homosexuality, race, and desire collide

Part academic/anthropological study of gay asian men, part travelogue, part red shoe diaries, Gawthrop chronicles his life as the gay, white Wilt Chamberlain with "yellow fever", jumping from asian man to asian man, first in his native Vancouver Canada, then an extended 3 month vacation in Thailand and Vietnam, to eventually "going native" (his words) by living in Thailand for three years.

I commend the authors frankness and honesty, and owning up to the "Rice Queen" label. He said Thailand and Vietnam changed him, but where is the proof?