Through the lens of mobilities, this article discusses the physical and mental tensions between mobility and immobility that confront gay men during the embryonic stage of the AIDS epidemic in Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Better Mother. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical concept of “becoming-woman,” it further explores the “becoming-(m)other” of Danny, the gay Chinese Canadian protagonist of the novel. Bringing “becoming” into dialogue with the mobilities scholarship as a critical lens through which to address the issue of AIDS in the novel, this article argues that interracial love and queer forms of care have the potential to mitigate the impact of AIDS upon queer mobilities, both physical and metaphysical, and trouble heteronormativity.
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