An author’s culture and background inevitably impact the way their characters and stories are both written and understood. An example of this would be in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater, where the author and protagonist both come from a Nigerian father and a Tamil mother. By sharing these biographical details, Emezi can relay some of their experiences into the character, and write them more accurately to their culture. In each of our course texts, queerness is explored differently by each character due to socioeconomic status, religion, familial makeup, and, most importantly, culture. Having said this, queerness can be translated differently by different authors. This prompts the question of how culture can impact how one sees and expresses their sexuality and gender identity in the world, too.
Our cluster explores the ways concepts from secondary texts from Jose Muñoz, Elizabeth Freeman, and Jack Halberstam echo in the novels we’ve read regarding this question of how queerness is expressed in various cultures and subcultures. Take for example Freeman’s concept of queer temporality and the way time is structured (or unstructured) in Justin Torres’ We the Animals. The nonlinear narrative structure in this work is a reflection of the protagonist’s unique queer experience, one that is unable to be defined by a normative timeline. The disruption of the narrative development that challenges a normative timeline is a byproduct of this work being a queer coming-of-age story that exists within a heteronormative culture.
Halberstam’s idea about the queer art of failure can be seen throughout the texts we have discussed this semester. Queer failure goes hand in hand with the American Dream, many queer people are born into family units that strive to follow this dream to reach the top and ‘succeed’. The text On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a fantastic example of this, being that the narrator is from an immigrant family that strives to achieve the American Dream, a product of capitalism. This familial mindset deeply affects the narrator’s self-image and queer identity throughout the book.
There is a correlation between familial cultures in relation to queerness and gender identity. Many of the texts we have explored in class have showcased vastly different family cultures that directly relate to the narrator’s queerness and gender identity expression and understanding, including We the Animals, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Freshwater. We believe that factors including where an individual grew up, their parental relationships, shared/learned habits, and cultural surroundings can determine what paths a queer individual might go down, but more importantly, the way they view themselves through their queerness and gender identity. Each one of us dove deep into our readings and explored the familial culture of certain main characters, drawing deep connections from their childhood and queerness to our own cultures, seeking our own truths in these works of fiction.
As previously stated, culture can be seen to impact one’s perception of their own and their view of others’ queerness and sexuality. This cluster includes three papers that each discuss into the intricacies of familial culture seen both in the texts and through the writers’ own personal experiences.