Queer Reads Lexicon

A Community-generated Index and Archive Platform Exploring Queerness in Chinese Speaking Communities

The ideology and the emancipation of queer identity is often associated with Western contexts and institutions. How have Chinese-speaking people in diverse geographic regions, both in China and in the diaspora, started our own dialect of queer language?

Queer Reads Lexicon is a community-generated index and archive of queer language used in Chinese speaking communities. Viewers can browse through the current index of 100+ words, add a new word, as well as add new definitions to exisiting words. The lexicon platform is developed by Mark Lam (Site currently in development).

︎︎︎ Luanch Project
Product Design
Client: Queer Reads Library

Process

When Queer Reads Library approached me for the project, they wanted transform queer words they collected in a workshop into a digital format. Initially, I purposed creating a mindmapping tool to show relations of queer terms brought up by participants at their lexicon workshop. We eventually decided on creating an online index considering that it is both scalable and collaborative.

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