Journal of Transnational American Studies

Amy Sueyoshi’s Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi is a fascinating study of the writings and character of the transnational Japanese-born poet Yone Noguchi during his years in the United States, as seen through the prism of his interlocking sexual/romantic affairs with western writer Charles Warren Stoddard, historian Ethel Armes, and editor Léonie Gilmour (a liaison that produced the famed sculptor Isamu Noguchi). Sueyoshi’s detective work, matched with her sensitive analysis, allows readers to grasp the complicated ways that race, class, and “exoticism” inform intimate relations.