Olivia Jackson
People create social connections for their wellbeing. We can choose our friends and community based on our interests and beliefs. When this community becomes toxic, it’s easier to drop it and gain a new one. But family is a community that you don’t get to pick and choose. You’re born in it. Being trapped in familial community that doesn’t support you can produce negative effects on one’s mental health and sense of self. In novels We the Animals, by Justin Torres and Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, the main characters need space from their families in order to grow. Although trauma plays a part in their discovery of themselves, ultimately distance from their families allows them to grow into their queer identities.
In We the Animals, readers focus on the main character, who was raised in a lower-income household. This unnamed main characters’ parents are hardworking, and striving for a stable future for their children, as well as the American Dream. His parents work to the point of exhaustion, mainly seen on his mother’s part, to make ends meet. The narrators mother works at a brewery overnight, while his father works as a security guard. Since his parents are busy, the main character and his siblings have more time to themselves, to play, be rough, and as the narrator phrases it, “be animals.” The process of being an animal and wild allows for the main character to feel free, as well as build a sense of closeness with his siblings. This closeness however is broken in a traumatic moment when the main character realizes that his brothers can’t protect him from everything. In this moment, the main character goes over to a neighbor’s house and is exposed to porn of someone being sexually assaulted. As he watches his neighbor’s video tape, he hopes that his brothers stop him and save him from this exposure, but as the clip goes on his brothers stay silent, and don’t stop him from watching this film. At this moment he realizes that his brothers aren’t able to protect him from everything, and he starts to feel distant from them. This realization creates a disconnect between the main character and his siblings, letting the main character go off on his own to explore himself and his queerness, separate from his family. The main character isn’t mentioned to have any queer interactions, so the lack of having his family around to support him or discuss what he’s feeling causes him to be unsafe in his sexual exploration, such as the one with the bus driver. The bus driver was someone random he met and had no prior encounters with, not to mention the bus driver was older than the narrator. If the narrator had felt closer to his family, he may have felt welcome to discuss how he feels, and his parents to give him advice on how to be safe. The moment in the neighbor’s basement, while horrible and traumatizing as it is, allows the main character to step out of his comfort zone and explore things on his own, separate from his family members. This exploration however would’ve gone better if he was able to communicate and learn how to be safer from a community or his family.
As well as separation from family, We the Animals also deals with issues of Hispanic/Latine culture in regard to queerness. In the novel, the narrator is found to be queer and sent away by his family to a mental facility. This can be attributed to cultural assumptions about being queer. Many people see being gay or trans as dieses and to cure it you’d have to undergo treatment for it. The main character’s family most likely see him as ill and want to cure him by taking him to a mental facility. This brings up the question, if the narrator had felt comfortable and close to his family about his queerness, would they accept him? I feel that, if his parents had known about his journals earlier and he had communicated more with them, they could have been more accepting, since they could understand what was going on with him. His parents not knowing what was going on with him and believing he had an illness does not excuse their actions, but it would give an explanation to why he was unable to have a relationship with his family and to see them again.
On the other hand, in Emezi’s novel, Freshwater, the protagonist Ada is able to find acceptance in her community regarding her queerness, so she becomes more connected to her culture. The ogbanje, mainly Saint Vincent, encouraged her exploration and queerness. So while they were not the healthiest for her mental health, the ogbanje being accepting and encouraging of her allowed her to feel like she had a place to be queer in her culture.
In Freshwater, we focus on Ada and her journey with dealing with the spirits, or ogbanje, that are inside of her. Ada is Nigerian and Tamil, and the word ogbanje is Igbo, and means to come and go, and is used to describe children that have died and come back. The ogbanje represent the different sides of Ada, some stimming from trauma, while others being with her whole life. Asughara would be an example of a spirit stimming from trauma. The appearance of Asughara first comes to be after Ada is sexually assaulted, and they take over Ada and cause them to project their anger out into the world. Asughara also takes over during sex in order to protect Ada from any more harm. In the end, Asughara is more of a toxic spirit that occupies Ada and causes them mental anguish. By contrast, Saint Vincent can be seen as a more positive spirit. Saint Vincent comes about after Ada’s divorce and allows her to explore her sexual attraction to women, as well as her gender identity. With Saint Vincent in the forefront of her mind, Ada begins to bind her chest and present more masculine. The ogbanje enjoy this due to it fitting their view of what their vessel should look like. The spirits contribute to Ada’s queerness, by expanding her preferences and allowing her to have more gender expression.
We can see how queerness can impact familial relations through a study by Auckland University of Technology, titled Silencing Queerness – Community and Family Relationships with Young Ethnic Queers in Aotearoa New Zealand. This study mainly focused on how minority parents react to their children coming out as queer. In this study participants from a minority group in New Zealand were asked questions about their queerness and how it was reacted to by their friends and family. Many stated that the relationship with their parents became strained or they were even kicked out because of this. In the text, one of the participants speaks about their mother stating that “She is a single parent that moved to a different country, and she lost her sense of self. So for her to have done all those things, she wants her children to spend a nice, normal stable life. Unfortunately (to her), being queer doesn’t guarantee you a safe, normal, happy life” (Nakhid 214). By saying this the participant acknowledges the outlier of being a minority in a foreign country, and by being in foreign country, minorities already feel the need to fit in and be safe in this country. So, when a child comes out to be queer or opposes “the norm,” that normality is jeopardized. This would explain why in We the Animals the narrator’s family feels betrayed, because they could feel jeopardized. In Freshwater this can also be seen through Ada’s mother realizing that her child was different. Ada soon became afraid and ran away from the potential rejection from her family. I believe this fear is justified since same-sex relationships are illegal in Nigeria. This would also explain why Ada sought shelter in America and American culture, since same-sex relations are more legal and normalized.
In terms of personal experiences, I find that my upbringing impacts my queerness, due to the fact that I grew up in a religious setting. The idea of being queer was demonized and discouraged, so I was never able to explore my sexuality until I got older and ran into more and more queer people. Being able to meet and speak with queer people caused me to rethink my biases and gave me space to distance myself from my beliefs. With this space I was also able to explore my own sexuality. Being able to go to college and having more distance between me and my religious family also helped me evolve in my queer identity, and I could explore even more on my own. My upbringing still impacts me and my queerness to this day since I still I find myself working to deal with issues I’ve internalized. Being religious itself isn’t exactly harmful, but teaching someone to dislike another group based on things they can’t control is.
A person’s community impacts how they view themselves. Most people are able to construct a community based on their needs and similarities. On the other hand, there are some communities that can’t be picked out as easily, such as family. When connections are toxic or non-existent, they can cause harm to someone’s well-being. In the texts examined, we see how a community, or lack thereof, can hurt an individual. On one hand it could help with growth, but the process of growing could not be the healthiest. On the other hand, a strong community could help expand sense of self and respect for one’s culture. By noting the importance of community, we can understand their importance and why supportive spaces where queer people can be in community are needed.
Works Cited
Emezi, Akwaeke. Freshwater. Faber & Faber, 2019.
Nakhid, M.Tuwe, Z. Abu Ali, P. Subramanian & L. Vano. “Silencing Queerness – Community and Family Relationships with Young Ethnic Queers in Aotearoa New Zealand,” LGBTQ+ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18.3, 2022: 205-222, DOI: 10.1080/27703371.2022.2076003
Torres, Justin. We the Animals. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018