In this episode of Bookcast HK, we speak with Professor Alvin K. Wong on his new book, Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone (2025). Building on women of colour feminism and queer of colour critique, Professor Wong’s “unruly comparison” troubles the Eurocentric tendency of queer studies and the China-centrism of area studies.

This innovative approach of comparison does not look for direct equivalents; rather, it focuses on points of friction, asymmetry, and incongruity, where things do not translate neatly into another. It opens up alternative methods to investigate queer cultures and “perverse modernities” in “small places” like Hong Kong, thereby allowing us to “unknow” the dominant narrative of the city as being merely caught between British colonialism, China-centrism, and global capitalism.

By performing unruly comparison of incommensurate texts and genres, Professor Wong generates productive conversations on disparate topics: the undoing of archives (Chapter 1), queer minor transnationalism (Chapter 2), trans cinema and queer globalities (Chapter 3), intimacies among queer migrant workers beyond capitalist logic (Chapter 4), and the representation of sex workers and queering of geopolitical borders (Chapter 5). These original readings reveal the racial, gender, and sexual incommensurability within Hong Kong and across the transpacific Sinophone.

Towards the end of the episode, Professor Wong shares his new book project on queer Sinophone visuality, featuring experimental films by queer artists like Ellen Pau and Yonfan, and treats us to a reading from his book on the politics of unknowing Hong Kong.

Our sincere thanks to Professor Wong for his brilliant book and for this meaningful conversation. His book is available in our library collection; be sure to check it out!

Guest | Professor Alvin K. Wong (Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU)

Moderator | Ronny Chan

Technician | Chu Wai Kit

Title | Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone

Publisher | Duke University Press

ISBN | 9781478031895

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