About Sharon Yam

I am Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, Affiliate Faculty in Gender and Women's Studies, and Director of Social Theory at the University of Kentucky. My research and interests are closely related to my positionality as a queer diasporic Hongkonger, activist, and woman of color.

My first book, Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics of Citizenship (The Ohio State University Press, winner of the 2021 CCCC Outstanding Book Award), examines the storytelling practices of three racialized and gendered groups in Hong Kong. Set against a backdrop of relentless anti-trans legislation and attacks on bodily autonomy, my second book, Doing Gender Justice: Queering Reproduction, Kin, and Care (co-authored with Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, forthcoming with Johns Hopkins University Press), illuminates how language and care practices can be reshaped to promote reproductive and gender justice for trans and nonbinary parents.

Outside of academic publishing, my public writing focuses on social movements, grassroots organizing, and transnational activisms. My work has been published by media outlets such as the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Hong Kong Free Press.

Shui-yin Sharon Yam is Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, Affiliate Faculty in Gender and Women's Studies, and Director of Social Theory at the University of Kentucky.
Sharon's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Sharon:

Gretchen Sisson, "Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)

October 12, 2024

Relinquished

Gretchen Sisson
Hosted by Sharon Yam

Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the otherwise partisa…