East Asian Feminism

Former AFP Seoul correspondent Hawon Jung provides a firsthand account from the frontlines of South Korea's feminist movement, documenting how tens of thousands of Korean women sparked a MeToo wave, ended abortion bans, fought spycam crimes, and shattered Western stereotypes of 'docile' Asian women. Named one of The Economist's Best Books of 2023.

Anne Allison’s ethnography follows post-bubble stagnation, irregular work, lonely death, and post-Fukushima life to examine what happens when stable family and male-breadwinner institutions unravel.

Wei-hsin Yu compares half a century of women’s employment in Japan and Taiwan, showing why organizational arrangements, industrial policy, and life-course institutions matter beyond shared patriarchal culture.

A cult classic of Taiwanese queer literature, depicting the life of a group of lesbians in 1990s Taipei through a surreal and intense narrative. Written by Qiu Miaojin shortly before her tragic suicide, it captures the raw energy of post-martial law Taiwan.

In a near-future aging Japan, the state encourages citizens over seventy-five to end their lives. Chie Hayakawa examines ageism, withdrawn care, and the manufacture of voluntary choice.

A poignant Taiwanese drama exploring family secrets, grief, and the complex bonds between women across three generations as they organize a funeral for an estranged father.

A manga artist with cerebral palsy seeks authorship, sexual experience, and independent life. HIKARI makes a disabled woman not an object of care but a subject with desire, contradiction, and agency.

An older sex worker in a Seoul park is drawn into poverty, illness, and requests for death. E J-yong returns aging from demographic abstraction to class, gender, care, and survival.

Over five hours and seventeen minutes, Ryusuke Hamaguchi follows four women approaching forty in Kobe as friendship, marriage, work and departure test what it takes to speak honestly and truly hear one another.