Boys’ Love Manga

“Boys’ love,” a male-male homoerotic genre written primarily by women for women, enjoys global popularity and is one of the most rapidly growing publishing niches in the United States. It is found in manga, anime, novels, movies, electronic games, and fan-created fiction, artwork, and video. This collection of 14 essays addresses boys’ love as it has been received and modified by fans outside Japan as a commodity, controversy, and culture.

Antonia Levi is a retired professor of Japanese history and popular culture. She is the author of one previous book and numerous articles on Japanese anime and manga.

Mark McHarry is an independent scholar of both contemporary and Edo-period Japanese culture. His essays have been published in Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television and LGBT Identity and Online New Media, as well as other journals.

Dru Pagliassotti is a professor of communication at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and the author of several books.

Edited by Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry and Dru Pagliassotti

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 280
Bibliographic Info: 11 photos, glossary, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4195-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5627-7
Imprint: McFarland

Introduction
ANTONIA LEVI      1

Part One: Boys’ Love and Global Publishing
1. Gift Versus Capitalist Economies: Exchanging Anime and Manga in the U.S.
HOPE DONOVAN      11
2. From BRAVO to Animexx.de to Export: Capitalizing on German Boys’ Love Fandom, Culturally, Socially and Economically
PAUL M. MALONE      23
3. Boys’ Love Thrives in Conservative Indonesia
YAMILA ABRAHAM      44

Part Two: Genre and Readership
4. Better Than Romance? Japanese BL Manga and the Subgenre of Male/Male Romantic Fiction
DRU PAGLIASSOTTI      59
5. Yaoi and Slash Fiction: Women Writing, Reading, and Getting Off ?
MARK JOHN ISOLA      84
6. 101 Uses for Boys: Communing with the Reader in Yaoi and Slash
MARNI STANLEY      99
7. “She Should Just Die in a Ditch”: Fan Reactions to Female Characters in Boys’ Love Manga
M. M. BLAIR      110
8. Rewriting Gender and Sexuality in English-Language Yaoi Fanfiction
TAN BEE KEE      126

Part Three: Boys’ Love and Perceptions of the Queer
9. Uttering the Absurd, Revaluing the Abject: Femininity and the Disavowal of Homosexuality in Transnational Boys’ Love Manga
NEAL K. AKATSUKA      159
10. Boys in Love in Boys’ Love: Discourses West/East and the Abject in Subject Formation
MARK MCHARRY            177
11. Queering the Quotidian: Yaoi, Narrative Pleasures and Reader Response
MARK VICARS and KIM SENIOR      190
12. Gay or Gei? Reading “Realness” in Japanese Yaoi Manga
ALEXIS HALL      211
13. Raping Apollo: Sexual Difference and the Yaoi Phenomenon
ALAN WILLIAMS      221
14. Hidden in Straight Sight: Trans*gressing Gender and Sexuality via BL
ULI MEYER      232

Glossary
About the Contributors      265
Index      267

• “This volume, with its cross-cultural approach combined with a strong focus on fannish activities, is certainly a valuable contribution to the [manga studies] movement”—Transformative Works and Cultures
•  “At last, this collection pries open the last of the closet doors and allows for the analysis of the narratives of gay, transgendered, and intersexual subjects to emerge. Manga have been a unique source and archive of such work, slowly developing what has become a massive, global fan base. Each of the narratives in this anthology takes on a particular facet of the complicated and complex area of culture that surrounds the boys’ love genre, moving the discussion, finally, out into the light of day.”—Frenchy Lunning, editor-in-chief of Mechademia and professor, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
• “Boys’ Love Manga is a very welcome contribution to the field of manga and anime studies. It has something to offer in particular to scholars of gender and sexuality, of globalization, and of new media.”—James Welker, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific