Laura DuBois
I will have a family. I will get married, and I will raise children, for that is what my parents did for me and their parents for them. These thoughts feel natural for many people, since it is what we have been taught to think. However, this cultural norm, established long ago, is more natural for some than others. Another cultural norm that is not natural for everyone is heteronormativity, which describes the assumption that every individual in society is heterosexual, thus looking down upon those outside of this norm. Though heteronormativity does not favor every individual, it is an expectation for everyone in society nonetheless. Therefore, for those whose lifestyles or orientations are not validated by norms such as this one, what are they to do? Attempt to follow the norms to be accepted, only to be scrutinized for how unnatural they look doing so? Disappear from society altogether? In this essay I will use Elizabeth Freeman’s introduction, “Queer and Not Now”, from her book Time Binds, as well as Justin Torres’ We the Animals and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, in order to demonstrate how the protagonists in both books, as well as those in the LGBTQ+ community, are forced to live in the past, since they are not honored by temporalities and time binds established in society. Not being privileged by said time binds causes these characters and by extension many queer people to feel hopeless of a future in which their needs are included and heard.
Freeman begins the chapter by incorporating an example that explains the nature of temporalities in homosexuality: Nguyen Tan Hoang’s video K.I.P. (2002) of two men having sex in an experimental film. The film experiments with temporal dissonance in that viewers are able to rewind over and over again to the most sexually climactic part, connecting their bodily reactions to the men in the video, who experienced similar reactions in the past. Freeman argues that the film is a sound example of time binds in the sense that “naked flesh is bound into socially meaningful embodiment through temporal regulation” (3). To further explain the establishment of time binds, she also refers to chrononormativity as a strategy for organizing time to situate human bodies where they need to be in order to reach the most productivity possible and to complement a nation’s economy. Time itself is organized cyclically, therefore using the past to predict the future, thus creating less space for existing in a way that has not been lived before. With the industrialization of the United States, the idea of living domestically was posed as a way to live comfortably. With this idea, queer people, rather than being adapted into domesticity, became “figures for history, for either civilization’s decline or a sublimely futuristic release from nature, or both” (Freeman 7). In creating a negative light surrounding queerness, the comfortability that domesticity offered did not allow for such a way of living. Therefore, if we view queerness as a role on a television show, it played the villain in just one episode rather than being a repeating, valid character.
In order to further explain how society avoided incorporating queerness into its temporalities, Freeman incorporates Freud’s concept of the unconscious. Rather than adapting new timelines, he placed them in the past, claiming that sexual occurrences experienced by the adult, such as anality, was a result of lingering on memories from the childhood psyche. Therefore, these sexual experiences were placed in the past of the individual, denying the possibility of them being a part of the adult psyche. As a result, if one were to fixate on the past, they were seen as perverts who were not able to grow past their childhood urges. One theory that challenges this idea uses the lens of Marxism. Freeman incorporates Jacques Derrida’s assertion that in this theory, time is split between violence that has already occurred in history and the possibility of a different future. This approach relates to one aspect of queer theory, which questions the linear narrative of progress in society, in the hopes of creating new ways of understanding time and ways of living.
As queerness has been, and still is, pushed as a part of one’s past, as well as one moment in history, Freeman argues that queer people experience time in a nonlinear way. In We the Animals, Torres expands on this by creating a nonlinear narrative using the cyclical pattern that these theories recognize. Throughout the novel, the unnamed narrator and his older brothers, Manny and Joel, do not receive a stable household: their father is repeatedly emotionally and physically violent towards their mom, and they live in a neighborhood in which they witness different forms of violence regularly. Their exposure to these situations causes the boys themselves to adapt similar habits, evident in their partaking in physical fights with each other that results in them getting hurt: “We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful — little animals, clawing at what we needed” (Torres 51). Following Freeman’s chapter, there is a possibility for a different future for them, in which violence is not a part of their daily lives, but it is outweighed by the history that has repeated itself in their parents behavior, and therefore limits this possibility for their future. His bond with his brothers over the trauma of their childhood also binds them to their past, which affects his present self. Furthermore, the narrator struggles with his sense of self amidst the expectation to follow the cyclical norm of domesticity. As the novel progresses, he gains desires to explore his sexuality, though he knows that these desires are not accepted by his family, as evident in his father’s insistence on being a typical, dominant “man”. Consequently, he keeps these feelings away from them. Although he and his brothers are close in the sense that they are bonded by the harsh conditions in which they are raised, he is distant from them when it comes to his sexuality even though it seems they are somewhat aware that he is not straight; they indirectly poke fun at him for it. Through the narrator’s blurry memory of his childhood, his past and his present are connected and he is therefore not able to escape his past, encapsulating the effects of time binds and temporalities on his wellbeing.
Just as the protagonist in We the Animals experiences nonlinear time, Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous also utilizes a nonlinear narrative in order to escape already established time binds and temporalities. Written in the form of letters to his mother, protagonist Little Dog reflects on his coming of age in a time when being openly homosexual was not accepted or normalized. Similarly to We the Animals, the novel is structured by Little Dog both recounting his past through non chronological memories as well as his mother’s memories. At the end of the novel, he reflects on his experience not being validated by society: “If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly . . . To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted” (Vuong 238). As he grapples with his identity as a gay man, he realizes his own beauty. However, he is also aware that being gay is not seen as beautiful to the majority of people. Therefore, rather than showing his inner self to the world, only to be rejected, he exists in secret as an “other”. This separation from society is seen in his relationships with his loved ones. He never directly tells his mother that he is gay, instead opening up about it in this letter that she will never read. Towards the end of the novel, after Trevor, his love interest, passes away, he goes back to his mother’s house in the middle of the night and wakes her up. She asks him what is wrong to which he does not answer. Reflecting back on this moment, he writes, “Imagine I could lie down beside you and my whole body, every cell, radiates a clear, singular meaning, not so much a writer as a word pressed down beside you” (Vuong 171). His wanting to open up to her but not being able to shows how different and isolated Little Dog feels. Here it is clear that he believes his mother would reject him just like society would. Consequently, he writes what he wishes he could tell her, and therefore revisits the past in a nonlinear temporality. One way that they are bonded, however, is through intergenerational trauma of their past. Vuong incorporates his mother’s experience living in Viet Nam and immigrating to the United States, showing that she does relate to his feeling of not belonging in the sense that she is an immigrant and is therefore seen as “other” by those born in the country. In writing letters of his blurry coming of age, Little Dog demonstrates his struggles in existing in the present, in a world that is designed for him to exist in the past. While his and his mother’s intergenerational trauma bonds them, it bonds them in the past, just as the brothers in We the Animals are. Therefore, they are not privileged by the temporalities that are natural for others. Although he seems to recognize his own beauty at the end of the novel, Little Dog struggles to open up in a way that allows him to exist linearly with the rest of society, due to the fair assumption that he would not be accepted for being gay.
For the protagonists of We the Animals and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, imagining a life in which they can exist according to their own terms seems impossible, and therefore they are forced to revisit their past in order to try to understand who they are in a society that tries to limit them to only a moment in history. The end of both books do not offer closure, but rather uneasiness when one imagines their futures. The narrator in We the Animals is admitted to a psych ward after attacking his family. While this ending is hopeful in the sense that he stands up for himself, it is ultimately discouraging because we are left wondering what will happen to him, since it is clear he does not have much of a say in his future. The ending of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is similar in that it causes readers to question how Little Dog will continue on after; on one hand, his conclusion of the letters could signal a sense of healing as he has successfully processed his emotions. On the other hand, though, it is clear that the struggles that he has written about, specifically when it comes to his queerness, will continue to be struggles throughout his life. This leaves readers to hopefully have empathy for both characters, which is necessary to imagine a world in which they are validated.
Works Cited
Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2010.
Ocean Vuong. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. 2019. S.L., Vintage, 2020.
Torres, Justin. We the Animals. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.