Cluster #1
The Runt of the Pack: A Cluster on Animal Motifs, Familial Power Dynamics, and Queer Victimization
In several contemporary queer novels, writers use animal motifs to describe the behavior of individual characters and/or their family dynamics. Inherent in these comparisons is a pattern of protagonists appearing as the “runts” of their families, often being ostracized due to the perceived fragility of their stature and gentle nature, bookishness, and eventually their queerness. Because of this, the runt often experiences a dichotomy of fierce over-protection or forced adaptation to evade endangerment within their environment. This is evidenced in a scene in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous when Little Dog reveals to his mom that he’s getting bullied, and she responds by emphasizing his need to get bigger and stronger to protect himself (Voung 25-7). In the scene, Little Dog is never comforted, only hit by his mother for crying and critiqued for his small stature. By utilizing this trope of the runt, in this novel, Vuong expresses the cruelty that is often embedded into the path of self-discovery. In other queer novels, too, targeting the “weakest” and most unprepared character in the family, the queer protagonist, in these brutal situations, allows authors to highlight the runt’s growing strength in the face of adversity.
Queer characters are often depicted as feminine and defy essentialist and heteronormative frameworks that often equate sex to gender expression. Runt characters, therefore, can be defined as the weakest or lowest in a dominant social hierarchy. The main characters in novels such as Vuong’s and We the Animals by Justin Torres are considered runts because they closely embody the traits that are often associated with inferiority. In other words, the runt can never perform as the dominant party due to the expectation that traits that are deemed feminine coincide with submissiveness. Queer characters reflect the realistic oppression of the LGTBQ community by embodying the social hierarchy that places them as acquiescent and undeserving of self-actualization.
Heather Love’s introduction to Feeling Backward describes another way of examining queer physiologies: studying a wider variety of emotions that people relate to within queer communities historically. Using Love’s affective approach, one can determine that the figure of the ‘runt’ in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Justin Torres’ We the Animals, for example, prompts readers to “focus on the negative affects— the need, the aversion, and the longing— that characterize the relation between past and present” (Love 32). In We the Animals, the narrator needs and seeks comfort and familiarity from his parents. This is after he compares himself to his father who is “like an animal” whereas his mother is gentler and smaller, a runt like him. In other words, the vulnerability and need of these characters draw readers’ attention to the disturbing violence that tends to characterize queer coming-of-age stories.
Our team welcomes intrigued scholars who are eager to explore these ideas further to contribute a 1,500 to 2,000-word essay expanding upon the observations we have laid out in our introduction. Course texts with the most potential of offering relevant evidence and support for this argument include We the Animals by Justin Torres, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. All these novels center queer protagonists who are treated as the runt by their respective families, though the meaning of this role and the circumstances motivating its assignment can take many forms. The concept of chronobiopolitics as explored in the essay “Time Binds” by Elizabeth Freeman could also contribute more depth to these arguments, broadening its scope beyond these personal narratives and the troubled relationships they examine to the larger heterosexual social structures they exist within, encouraging the dehumanization of queer people and its subsequent manifestation of this runt identity.
Contributors are invited to write on critical readings of a runt character, intersections between these characters and their environments, and how runt characters are magnified and affected by their varied identities. If this pitch has piqued your interest, submit a roughly 200-word abstract alongside a brief two-sentence biography to jebhomielen1@student.gsu.edu by April 8th, 2024. Your completed essay should be sent to us via email by April 19th, 2024. Please ensure that your paper is in MLA format and is no more than 2,500 words.
Cluster #2
A Literary Examination of Queer Failure
Queer literature has been saturated with a pervasive sense of inevitable failure. It has been a genre in which happy endings are rare. Works such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Spring Fire by Vin Packer, Sarah Schulman’s Rat Bohemia, and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous demonstrate how queer literature has historically been grounded in temporal as well as social failures to conform and “succeed” in a society dominated by hetero-patriarchal capitalism. In recent years, queer literature has amassed a broader audience, though the theme of failure is still ever-present. Authors like Leslie Feinberg, Alison Bechdel, Justin Torres, and Robert Jones, Jr. have succeeded in bringing queer narratives into the mainstream canon. While the genre of queer literature and some of its authors have gained accolades and success through a widening acceptance of queer identities as a whole, this success has not been mirrored by the success of the characters within the fiction of the genre, at least insofar as success is conventionally defined. Each of their works is populated by characters whose lives in the LGBTQIA+ community are perceived as failures —from existence in alternative family structures and missed temporal milestones, to living outside of the gender binary. Keeping this in mind, queer theorists such as Jack Halberstam and Elizabeth Freeman challenge what may be seen as failure, instead envisioning alternative, more fulfilling ways of life beyond the dominant hegemony.
Contemporary queer literature defies the conventions of storytelling, often asking readers to suspend their expectations and desires. In autobiographical novels such as Justin Torres’ We The Animals, Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater, readers might feel that hoping for a “happy ending” is an exercise in futility. Indeed, these examples all end on bittersweet, ambiguous notes that might not satisfy some readers. When reading with theories of queer failure in mind, however, readers might begin to grasp what it could mean to “fail forward.” The narrator in We The Animals, for example, experiences a collapse and estrangement from his family that allows him to step fully into his identity as a gay man. In On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the resolution of Little Dog’s first relationship coincides with his pursuit of a new life. Freshwater’s Ada begins to piece her life together only after a failed suicide attempt when her life truly hits rock bottom. For these three protagonists, “failures” precede moments of breakthrough and closure.
Reading texts through the critical lens of queer failure involves seeking alternatives to common notions of success. Defined by Jack Halberstam, queer failure “turns on the impossible, the improbable, the unlikely, and the unremarkable. It quietly loses, and in losing it imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being” (The Queer Art of Failure 88). Manifestations of this in contemporary LGBTQIA+ literature often challenge traditional narratives about normalcy that have been derived from a heteronormative, capitalistic framework. Queer failure actively pursues alternatives to individualism and conformity. In Leo Bersani’s essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?” he raises the notion that the queer community has been failed by greater society in a multitude of ways, including healthcare. Bersani explores the ways in which the queer community is also made to seek alternatives in different aspects of life. This perspective can be seen as a form of resistance against the pressures to conform, highlighting the value of living life outside of conventional expectations despite its unconventional consequences. Bersani’s work coincides with Halberstam’s argument that queer failure can become a productive tool to oppose traditional conventions. These ideas carry the potential to create change, encouraging individuals to interrogate oppressive social norms, benefiting queer people and the rest of society as well.
Our team invites scholars to contribute essays that connect elements of queer failure and resistance to both literary texts and broader societal themes. Important themes to keep in mind when beginning to write for this cluster are those that Jack Halberstam presents in The Queer Art of Failure, as well as concepts from Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds. These themes, such as chrononormativity, choronobiopolitics, queer time, pedagogical vs performative time, and failing forward, can be related to queer failure and queer resistance. These ideals are not relevant only to the primary sources that have been mentioned thus far, but can also be applied to both novels we will read later in the course and the overall queer experience. Analyzing these key ideas that define queer failure, then using evidence from the primary sources to create a larger overarching argument is the essence of what this cluster attempts to produce.
Potential contributors interested in submitting their essays to this cluster should get in touch with our editorial team as soon as possible by emailing sharr1@gsu.student.edu. The editorial team asks that any scholars wishing to write an essay contributing to this cluster provide us with their 200-word abstract and short biographical statements by Friday, March 22nd. A copy of the completed essay will need to be provided to the team, at the latest, by Friday, April 19th, when it is due in class.
Cluster #3
Queer Time Bleeds
Memories are often non-linear, challenging traditional, more societally-enforced ideas about time. While memory’s non-linearity is scientific fact, it is also relevant to the context of queer experiences. Queer people navigate unique situations as they age, including the exploration of one’s sexuality or the rediscovery of gender identity, often breaking with typical, heteronormative narratives of marriage and family. This breaking, often essential to queer lives, also illustrates the significance of embracing non-linear temporalities. Through embracing non-linearity in art, we see a more authentic representation of diverse queer experiences.
Contemporary queer autobiographical fiction tends to deconstruct linear memories of experience and “discourse[s] of domesticity” that form heteronormativity (Freeman 5). For example, Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a book built around memory’s “flood” and how language barriers construct non-linearity (Vuong 78). Justin Torres’ We the Animals describes a family “in dreamtime” that blends childhood and adulthood (Torres 6). Even Emezi’s Freshwater sees Ada’s bildungsroman disrupted by the atemporal experience of having a god/spirits crammed into her “weak [bag] of flesh” (Emezi 6). In these texts, non-heteronormative experiences bleed across time, like paint seeping through paper, paralleling theories of queer time.
The fragmentation of time is a critical theoretical framework for considering queer lives and livelihoods. In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freeman provides an understanding of how queer beings disrupt time by breaking societal expectations and deconstructs the idea of a linear timeline of societal productivity (Freeman 3). Social institutions enforce this timeline and suppress queer experiences for threatening social norms. Choosing or embodying a different life path for oneself actively upends our preconceived ideas of time and societal purpose. Thus, queer timelines are unique and often fail to meet standards of socioeconomic success because they require “commitment to the bodily potentiality that neither capitalism nor heterosexuality can fully contain” (Freeman 19).
We seek scholarly essays exploring and expanding on the central theme of queer non-linearity and how a queer perspective merges non-normative temporal experiences.
Topics May Include:
- Maturing and Having to “Grow Up” Quickly
- Infantilization
- Non-Linear Memory
- Disrupting Chrononormativity
- Straying from Heteronormative Milestones
Contributors may also center their interpretations and ideas about queer time. Texts with themes accompanying these concepts might include We the Animals, with its time jumps and non-linear structure, or Freshwater, in which trauma distorts the character Ada’s concepts of time.
Technical Requirements:
The abstract for proposing essays should be 200-300 words. All submissions should be in MLA format (12-Point, Times New Roman, Double-Spaced). Your essay must also be between 1,500 – 2,000 words.
- The deadline for final essay submissions is 11:59 p.m. on April 16th.
- Abstracts and final submissions should be sent to hmathews1@student.gsu.edu
- If your abstract is accepted, please provide a 50-100 word personal statement, written in the third person, with your final essay submission.
- This statement should include: your name, accomplishments you wish to highlight, personal information vital to your essay
Works Cited
Emezi, Akwaeke. Freshwater. Grove Press, 2018.
Freeman, Elizabeth. “Introduction: Queer and Not Now .” Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2010, pp. 1–19.
Torres, Justin. We the Animals. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Penguin Press 2019.
Cluster #4
Time Binds: Temporalities of Queer Maturity and Actualization
In novels, We the Animals by Justin Torres, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, readers are presented with several queer temporalities relating to gender, sexual, and social development. These novels punctuate time with the nuanced evolution of gender and sexuality, emphasizing a distinctive trend identified by Elizabeth Freeman in her book, Time Binds. Both Freeman and the cluster’s analysis aims to uncover the correlation between queer temporalities and time binds in contemporary queer literary texts, offering insights into the process of self-actualization. The aforementioned novels and other works of queer autobiographical fiction explore queer time by navigating both external and internal social achievements. This perspective, framed by queer temporalities and time binds, aids in understanding development and actualization of sex and gender within the context of modern society in novels such as We the Animals and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
The relativity of time is dualistic in nature as it creates both a binding and transformative space for characters in novels such as On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, We The Animals, Freshwater and Casey Plett’s Little Fish. Primarily, we invite critical responses regarding the use of literary techniques and devices in the narratives of contemporary queer literature, highlighting the process of self-actualization through the scope of time and queer temporalities. The deconstruction of time varies according to the techniques employed by the authors. As in the examples above, we are particularly interested in the linear and nonlinear measure of time as it unfolds the realities of queer temporalities to reveal not only the transformation of the protagonists but also their familial and social constructs and worlds. The contemporary queer texts mentioned above simultaneously repel the hetero-normative construct of time while revealing its dis-configuration for queer realities and body politics. For example, Vuong states, “It only takes a single night of frost to kill off a generation. To live, then, is a matter of time, of timing” (4). We solicit an academic approaches to internalize and discuss the literary material as it concerns time and queer lived experiences.
Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds is the main theoretical framework applied to this cluster. Freeman describes the process of time binds as one in which “…naked flesh is bound into socially meaningful embodiment through temporal regulation: binding is what turns mere existence into a form of mastery in a process” (3). These time binds are visible in how characters such as Little Dog and the narrator of We the Animals engage with the development of their sexualities. Both characters create these time binds as they undergo puberty and have their first sexual experiences. As they begin mastering their own sexualities, they also become masters of their gender, such as Saint Vincent in Freshwater. Saint Vincent’s appearance refers to the genderless period of childhood, which then binds the Ada’s body in both the childhood and adult stages. By understanding queer time as a non-linear experience through this framework, authors and readers gain a clearer understanding of queer self-actualization as it relates to gender and sexuality.
We invite contributors to submit essays that offer their ideas on queer temporalities and time binds concerning the development of gender and sexuality in subject to self actualization and queer realties. Texts to consider include: We the Animals, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Freshwater, and Little Fish. Through language and literary devices these novels manipulate the construct of time in both a linear and nonlinear plot that present queer temporalities that aid in the comprehension of queer secularities that go against heteronormativity by marking character’s internal milestones as well as their familial and social dilemma. We encourage contributors to explore the way the texts’ nonchronological narratives reveal queer experiences as well as the ways queer temporalities dismantle heteronormative ideas of gender and sexuality.
Editorial team members are Izumi Sugiyama, Sheryl Watts, Toni-Leigh Rahim, Margarita Delgado, and Laura DuBois. If interested, abstracts for this cluster are due by April 1st. Please send them to ldubois4@student.gsu.edu. In your abstract, please include: the text(s) you will pull evidence from, your thesis, and your interest in this cluster. Please submit your abstract by April 1, and the final draft of your essays by April 19th.
Notes and Information
Theoretical frameworks sampled: Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds
Works sampled: Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater; Casey Plett, Little Fish; Justin Torres, We the Animals; Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Cluster #5
Cultural Inheritance and Queer Identity
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.
How do 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 also be seen throughout the texts we have discussed this semester. Queer failure relates to the American Dream, as 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 Ocean Vuong’s 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. We urge contributors to draw these or similar connections in their essays.
We invite submissions for cluster essays on the correlation of 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. We invite you to dive deeply into any of our course readings and explore the familial culture of the main characters, drawing connections to between characters’ childhoods and their queerness and, if you’re comfortable, relate these connections to your own familial culture, queerness, and gender identity.
As previously stated, culture can be seen to impact one’s perception of their own and their view of others’ queerness and sexuality. Contributors should submit a paper that delves into this issue through the texts studied in this course, as well as drawing and connecting personal experiences to this topic, as many of these writers do. If submitting a paper into this cluster is of interest to you, we request notice of intention to submit by Wednesday, April 10th by 11:59 pm, and all submissions being submitted by Wednesday, April 17th at 11:59 pm. Contact Kathy Nguyen, Ella Simm, or Olivia Jackson via iCollege.