The Rice Queen Diaries: A Memoir
by Daniel Gawthrop
Arsenal Pulp Press. 252 pages, $16.95
Potato Queen: A Novel
by Rafaelito V. Sy
Palari Publishing. 267 pages, $14.95
A “RICE QUEEN” is generally defined as a white man who’s attracted to Asian men, while a “potato queen” is an Asian man who’s attracted to white men. The terms are often used disparagingly, with rice queens seen as sexual imperialists and potato queens as self-hating race traitors. For this reason, it takes some nerve for an author to come out as either on the cover of a book. But the authors of the two books under review have done just that: Daniel Gawthrop in a memoir entitled The Rice Queen Diaries; and Rafaelito V. Sy, albeit in the guise of a first-person narrator, in the seemingly autobiographical novel Potato Queen.
