Yu’s prose flows as much for our reading pleasure as it does for easing us into the long histories and present realities of violence against Asian women. But it also delivers a valuable framework for unpacking traumas, unlearning harmful ideologies, and embracing one’s vulnerabilities after years of detachment and self-preservation. Fetishized brims over with disarming humor and honesty.

With its queer protagonist, colorful aesthetic, and political undertones, it had all the ingredients for a cinematic breakthrough that could have re-centered the existing rhetoric surrounding Mexican and queer realities. Instead, we got a fever dream of queer clichés and a narrow-minded European fantasy of Mexico—a superficial spectacle that stumbles clumsily over the very identities it claims to uplift.