Category: 2022 Blog Post

Mala Ramchandin was forced to endure a horrific childhood. When she was quite young, her mother had planned to leave their home of Paradise Falls with Mala, Mala’s sister Asha, and her lover, Lavinia. When that did not happen, Mala and Asha were left to live with their father, who turned to raping Mala as a way to get back at his wife, Sarah, for leaving him. Eventually, Asha leaves too and Mala is left alone with her father, Chandin. Things all come to a head when Mala starts a secretive relationship with Ambrose Mahonty and when Chandin finds out, he attempts to kill Ambrose, but Mala kills Chandin first.

After all of this, Mala ends up living a life of solitude. With a minimal use of spoken language, she lives amongst nature and seems to enjoy life, but never forgets her horrible past. Mala becomes very deliberate with her use of spoken language and only uses it when she deems it absolutely necessary. One moment is when the police are searching her house and they say that they are worried about her safety. She responds with “You never had any business with my safety before.” and “Why now for…?” (Mootoo 193).

So why has Mala retreated from speaking? It is because she has learned that people will not help her, even if she is asking them to. Throughout her whole childhood, the town of Paradise Falls knew what her father was doing to her but did nothing. They continued to respect Chandin for he was still a man of God. Everyone who ever showed care for Mala leaves her as well. Her mother and Aunt Lavinia (even though they did not plan on leaving Mala and Asha behind, they still did), her younger sister Asha, and eventually Ambrose after her learns that Chandin had been raping Mala her whole life. For Mala, spoken language had never helped her in the past, it only seemed to hurt her. When she decided to live a life of solitude, she removed all of the things that caused pain in her life and being ignored was one of them. If she never spoke again, her words could never be ignored.

For years in the town of Lantanacamara, Asha and Mala Ramchandin silently suffered sexual abuse from their father. On this colonized island, Christianity is now the main religion and the people embrace its values and principles on this colonized land. In Cereus Blooms at Night, Shani Mootoo describes the feelings and attitudes held by the townspeople toward Chandin Ramchandin and his sinful (but not confessed nor publicly condemned) behavior: “While many shunned him there were those who took pity, for he was once the much respected teacher of the Gospel, and such a man would take to the bottle and to his own child, they reasoned, only if he suffered some madness. And, they further reasoned, what man would not suffer a rage akin to insanity if his own wife, with a devilish mind of her own, left her husband and children” (195). This quote shows that while the town was knowledgeable of the abuse these girls suffered, they not only ignored and suppressed this reality but justified it. Mootoo’s use of the words “reasoned” and “further reasoned” explains how Mr. Ramchandin’s sin is covered up and excused while Sarah’s and Lavinia’s is not (195). Chandin’s Christian upbringing, thanks to the Thoroughly family, allows for his once very high respect to still be somewhat maintained throughout the town. Sarah and Lavinia’s escape positions Chandin as a victim: this was something that happened to him, not something he may have caused. As Mootoo puts it, they took “pity” (195).

The continual rape of Asha and PohPoh is the misdirected punishment meant for their aunt and mother. But, due to their absence, the girls take their place. This can be explained by the Christian doctrine that all sin must be atoned for. According to the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus took humanity’s place on the cross to die for humanity’s sins. Essentially, the idea states that the world’s debt would always be there and had to be paid, so it really was a matter of who would suffer and die in order to fulfill that payment. Jesus is the answer to atonement in Christian myth. This logic/doctrine can be applied to this passage in which the town of Lantanacamara justified Chandin’s abuse. It is Sarah, with her “devilish mind,” that caused this, not Mr. Ramchandin (195). In this way, he is partially absolved from responsibility for his own actions. He is the one that plays god in this trinity of sin, punishment, and atonement. He is only suffering “some madness”—this language implies a space for empathy—while Sarah and Lavinia were committing a sin that has no reasoning for justification as a result of homophobia in the Christian tradition (195).

 

 

“A Note about Gender, or Why Is This White Guy Writing about Being a Lesbian? … Today I live in the world as a man, even while my internal sense of gender is as a genderqueer, neither man nor woman. At the same time, I have no desire to abandon or disown my long history as a girl, a tomboy, a dyke, a woman, a butch” (Clare xxvii).

tatiana de la tierra was a latina lesbian poet. While she wrote many shorter pieces, one of her main works was For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology, a collection of poems—both in Spanish and English, giving a dual translation of each poem. I could write hundreds of pages on her work, but there is one poem in particular that connects to Clare’s words, “The ‘Others’ of Us”.

–

The “Others” of Us

there are “women” who were born “female” who are “lesbian” “women”.

there are “women” who were born “female” who are non-“feminine” “lesbians”.

there are “women” who were born not- “women” who became “women” and are “lesbians”.

there are “lesbians” who were born “female” who became not-“woman” (and continue being “lesbians”).

there are “women” who baptize themselves as “lesbians” who are also non-“lesbians”.

there are “women” who are almost “lesbians” –they fantasize about being with “women” and they experiment, to no avail;

they are not capable of being “lesbians”.

there are “lesbians” who are Lesbians.

–

(de la tierra 49)

tatiana de la tierra’s work functions as a theory about what lesbianism is and who it is for. Her general argument is that: whoever wants to be a “lesbian” can be—there is no binary, no definition. Her thesis for the entire work (not just this poem) is that lesbianism is created by those that identify as lesbians, forming a collective identity that is inclusive and open. Specifically in this poem, the Spanish name for it is, “L@s otr@s de nosotr@s: Entre comillas”  — in English… The others of us: between quotation marks. “entre comillas” is important because it draws the reader’s eye to the quotation marks used around “women” “lesbians” “female”  “feminine”. The use of these quotation marks is where I am drawing the connection to Clare.

The quotes act as a remind to the heteropatriarchal definitions of these words—both Clare and tatiana refute these definitions and seek to create their own. I think an analysis of the works cannot be one way, one cannot be used solely as a lens for another, because they work in equal conversation. Clare defines gender within his own framework, saying “Today I live in the world as a man”—he speaks from his own transition experience as a genderqueer person (xxvii). And tatiana speaks of all those who identify as lesbians—including Clare.

Importantly, tatiana never uses the word genderqueer—instead, she defines gender through “not-‘woman’”. I believe there is a power in creating a definition based on separation rather than identity. Let me explain further, to say “not-‘woman’” means to define yourself as something you are not, and not necessarily define yourself as what you are. Clare echoes this when he discusses genderqueerness— “[I am] neither man nor woman” (xxvii), but something else—what he goes further to define as being genderqueer.  Clare, like tatiana writes, “continues being ‘lesbian’” because that is how he wants to live (de la tierra 49).

The rules and definition of gender that are immediate in most peoples’ minds, are “shaped by misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and shaped again by white supremacy, capitalism, and ableism” (Clare xxviii). Both Clare and tatiana “yearn for the day when all the rules” that create and define exclude gender—“come crashing down” (Clare xxviii). Their works in combination offer new definitions, new ways of knowing and living—Clare focuses on smashing these interlocking power structures and in the same way, tatiana focuses on Lesbians (note the uppercase). Their fight is the same.

“With her, I understood finally what it meant to want my hand on a lover’s skin, the weight of a lover’s body against mine. A bone long fractured, now mending (156).”

 

This is a line from “Stones in my Pocket, Stones in my Heart” but it wouldn’t be out of place in “Written on the Body”. Clare’s intensely personal work on identity in Exile and Pride provides a great lens to look at “Written on the Body” through. The narrator in WotB shaped their identity based on how others perceived them but found themself through Louise. “but then I turn a corner and recognise myself again. Myself in your skin, myself lodged in your bones, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every surgeon’s wall. That is how I know you. You are what I know (Winterson,pg ). 

  Written on the Body is a book not just about love, but identity. Something that could be seen in both works was how one’s identity is shaped by how others perceive them. In WotB the lack of identity given to the narrator is focal to the book. While they are characterized, they can shift with how other perceive them and how they wanted to be perceived (examples of this is how they went from busting the patriarchy with Ignes to going to church with  .A chameleon, able to morph and shift their being with what they want to be seen as. How queer.

  Yet identity isn’t as easy as choice. Throughout our reading of WOTB, some people have assigned the narrator masculinity based off of the slap, and that subsequently changed how they read his character. Yet others assigned them female, due to the lack of seriousness the narrator was treated with in both the scene with the gun and her affairs with married women as well as the flowing, disconcerting style of thought she had. These don’t inform us how the narrator identifies, but it does inform how they were treated. This can shape their identity – or the perception of others can leave one floundering on how they truly identity.

     Identity is agency. Clare’s talk of stolen and reclaimed bodies allows us to see the way that identity is a complex form of agency, particularly for marginalized individuals. His identification with the term butch as a way to make room for his gender and the messy margins it resides in, is an act of power, by pushing aside the hetro-cis-normative gender roles that cast him as female and the ableist stereotypes that cast him as an asexual, genderless being because of his disability. He found a place within queer and disabled communities where he could begin to chip away af the rocky avalanche that is identity, the self, and how he identifies himself. 

    Meanwhile, we know nothing about the narrator on WotB except for their actions. It’s up to them to create an identity outside of others, but with Louise, we see both more of themself being pushed to the surface and more buried deep, locked away to prevent them from being who they actually are, their identity superseded by others preferences. 

 

“I—like all of us—am practicing my politics during a protracted time of war. … There is no foreseeable end to the war on terror, the war on drugs, the many wars of occupation funded by the United States. We live in a time of unrelenting war. … creating lasting peace with justice requires a fundamental commitment to multi-issue organizing” (Clare xxiv).

—

Clare discusses “war” in his preface for the 2009 edition of exile & pride. I believe that war can be a framework for understanding the argument Clare makes, as well as the connection to the class.

War, for Clare, is not just about the unrelenting unjust war on terror fought abroad but also the wars fought against people at home—the war on terror/drugs. (I have purposefully included the war on terror within domestic wars because of how the United States treats its own citizens). War is about the daily lived experience of everyone that war touches and the war touches everyone—albeit in different ways (Clare xxiv).

To “practice politics” is a decision one makes, and those of us who live outside ‘normalcy’ are forced to live a political life—our bodies are political (Clare xxiii) For Clare, a queer and disabled theorist–his decision to practice multi-issue politics is in opposition to the current construction of the state and its definitions of disability and ‘normalcy’ (Clare xxiv). Thus, “practicing politics during a time of protracted war” (emphasis mine) illuminates that war is not just fighting ‘an enemy’ but conceptualizing the larger framework that war operates in (Clare xxv).

In other words, by living in a state of constant protracted war, war becomes a fundamental part of living in the United States—as well as being affected by the interlocking systems of war, “white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism, and ableism [that] work in concert” (Clare xxv). For Clare, the just and political life is to be anti-war. And since being anti-war also entails being against all the interlocking power structures a broader construction of who we are fighting by being political is formed. To fight, Clare states, is to “[create] lasting peace with justice,” with “a fundamental commitment to multi-issue organizing” (Clare xxiv). To do this, we must understand these power structures and how they affect each part of our lived experience—gender, race, religion, sexuality, and disability. War and its power structures create a politics of us and them and the only way to unite and fight is to have multi-issue organizing.

To state plainly the connection to the larger issues at play, in order to stop the war on our bodies—we must identify and dismantle the “interlocking power structures” that we have been talking about in class and realize how war, capitalism, ableism, and homophobia build off of each other to create a hostile world. Clare’s works offer a roadmap to understanding how to address and dismantle each structure.

Terms and definitions for various genders and sexualities are important to non-heterosexual and non-cisgender people and queer theorists. Every letter in the acronym LGBTQ+ represents a different word with a different definition, but it’s not just a definition. These words give language to describe the identities of real people. Since LGBTQ+ is a bit of a mouthful to say and does not necessarily encompass every non-cishet identity even with the expanded LGBTQQIAAP acronym, the term “queer” has been used as a broad substitute in order to include all people who fall outside of heteronomativiy. 

 

In Queer Time and Place by Judith Halberstam, he suggests that “if we try to think about queerness as an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic pratices, we detach queerness from sexual identity and come closer to understanding Foucault’s comment in ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’ that ‘homosexuality threatens people as a ‘way of life’ rather than as a way of having sex’” (1). As the definition of the word queer becomes more inclusive of time, space, and economy instead of gender and sexuality, it expands the definition and experience of being queer in a heternormative world. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first definition of queer as an adjective means “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric,” and another definition describes it as slang for one who is “conspiculously or flamboyantly homosexual.” These two definitions of queer as an adjective are being used in both ways in Halberstam’s argument. 

 

While he says to “detach queerness from sexual identity,” the multiple meanings of this word, and these two provided in particular, cannot be separated (1). Halberstam’s queer definition is expansive, not exclusionary of the basis for why the queer community is called such in the first place. In contrast to this statement, the use of the word queer when referring only to gender and sexuality can reduce the other nonconforming aspects of a queer person’s life experience. This is why Halberstam cites Michel Foucault: “‘homosexuality threatens people as a ‘way of life’ rather than as a way of having sex’” (1). There are aspects of queer life in regards to gender and sexuality that affect other aspects of life such as time, space, and economy that are not experienced in the same way from a cisgender, heterosexual person to a queer person. For example, the heteronormative time of life as Halberstam notes progresses as such: “birth, marriage, reproduction, and death” (2). The duration it takes to reach these life milestones or the absence of their achievement may be ways in which queer temporalities are created. Additionally, these life moments fuel capitalism. Jobs hire you expecting you to work until retirement which is about 40 years. A queer life cut short by disease cannot be afforded in a system dependent on human labor. Furthermore, the fact that same-sex couples cannot naturally reproduce or do not utilize scientific advancements to have their own children also do not follow this expected life schedule that has served heterosexual couples forever. 

 

Halberstam allows the reader to consider and rethink the definitions and connotations of the word queer and what that does for aspects of life not immediately related to sexuality and gender.

 

“The image of Suzanne and Susan holding hands as we walked Battle Rock Beach stuck with me for weeks. I knew somewhere deep inside me, rising up to press against my sternum, that I was like them. This I knew, but by the time I turned 13, it had vanished.” (Clare 154)

During this passage, Eli reflects on one of the few times he interacted with openly queer people as a child. Even at this age, he knew he was like them but cultural messages about who he should like and how he should act suppressed this realization. Being cis and heterosexual is thought of as the norm and those identities are projected on children from a young age. I think this quote shows that cultural stereotypes and norms are learned. “The image of Suzanne and Susan holding hands … stuck with me for weeks.” To me, this part of the passage is saying that representation matters. Seeing people who look, act or love like you is necessary when figuring out your own identity. When you don’t fit into the heteronormative box, seeing people who also do not fit into that box is important and can be helpful when figuring out your identity.

The last sentence of this quote “This I knew, but by the time I had turned 13, it had vanished.” made me think about when Eli was talking about being older and figuring out his identity.  “I had never kissed a boy, never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. … I was not in love with a woman; I hadn’t even had a crush.” I think that the intuition that Eli felt about his sexuality is shown in these two quotes. There seems to be this idea in our culture that in order to know that your sexuality does not fit the norm, you must have sexual experiences to validate the questioning of your sexuality. Straight people are never asked how they know they are straight whereas queer people are often asked how they know they are not straight. These quotes show that Eli had an intuition and idea about his sexuality before having experiences that fit with his sexual identity. You can know that your identity does not fit into society’s heteronormative box, without having any sexual or romantic experiences.

“I watched and listened to the girls in my school talk about boys, go behind the equipment shed to kiss them, later whisper in algebra class that they had sex with them. I watched from the other side of a stone wall, a wall that was part self-preservation, part bones and blood of aloneness, part the impossible assumptions I could not shape my body around.” (Clare 144)

 

In Eli Clare’s book Bodies, he bolsters his arguments surrounding queer theory and disability activism with personal narrative that is often touching, relatable, and heartbreaking. In the above quote, he describes what it was like to be among his female classmates in his youth and not relate to their obsession with boys whatsoever, feeling like an outsider to it all. The first part of this quote that grabs my attention is that Clare specifically says he watches heteronormativism occur from the other side of a “stone wall”—this is a figurative stone wall, separating him from his classmates, but it’s likely also a callback to the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Clare elsewhere describes that he knew he liked girls when he was younger, perhaps deep down, but he forgot and had to rediscover that part of him. I think that although he doesn’t say it outright in this passage, Clare is certainly alluding to the fact that one reason he couldn’t relate to his female classmates was that he had no interest in men whatsoever—he liked women. The use of “stone wall” is a clever metaphor that then serves a dual purpose.

 

While I do think that the “impossible assumptions” Clare refers to are about his sexual orientation, I also think he’s talking about his complicated sense of gender identity at the time. Assigned female at birth, Clare makes it known that in his youth and adolescence he felt a clear disconnect with girls his age and recognized early on that he was “not girl, not boy” (Clare 151). As he did with his sexuality, Clare sensed from an early age that his experience of gender identity was different from his peers. This does not make it any easier to come to terms with, however, which is why he uses the term “impossible” to describe these self-realizations. Discovering anything about yourself that differs from societal norms can be terrifying, especially when you have grown up without understanding such identities to be just as normal and valid as cis-hetero identities, and Clare captures that in this passage.

 

“I felt as if I were looking in a mirror and finally seeing myself, rather than some distorted fun-house image.”(Clare 4)

At every turn, society has something shouting out some standard that we the people are supposed to meet. There’s a “should be” for pretty much everything.  This is especially true with gender norms because society has enforced such rigid guidelines for so long. To step out of the box, to want to be something other than pink or blue is unfathomable to some people. For other people, being able to step out of that box is a saving grace. It allows the out-of-the-box people to belong regardless of their “shouldn’t’s”. Clare’s retelling of his experience of feeling as though he looking in a mirror and seeing himself for the first time represents a coming-of-age moment that everyone has; the moment they start to realize who they are. Whether it is a physical mirror or a mental mirror, and whether or not Clare meant for this to apply to, everyone it does. The passage keeps displaying how uncomfortable Clare feels in his skin, and how he is constantly wondering his who he is. Prior to this scene of him looking in the mirror, there is just an obvious lack of security revolving around his identity which is something experienced by all at one point or another. This lack of security comes from the standards that we are brought up with. In class we discussed the standards of what one is “supposed to be” and that statement is the problem.

Later on in the chapter Clare poses the question “How natural are the rigid , mutually exclusive definitions of male and female if they have to be defended…?”. (Clare 6) This further reinforces the whole idea of having to fit in a box, a really “rigid” box. “How natural?” not natural at all. Perhaps biologically the boxes of male and female could be more applicable but even then those labels don’t always apply. The fact that people are raised to fit into a box creates a warped sense of self. Its societal standards and reasons like this that Clare did not begin to see he was until he was older. Instead of being more sure of himself his whole life he felt confined and not fitting into the box must have been confusing.

“Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone,” (Winterson 90).  

 

In her novel Written on the Body, Juliet Winterson consistently uses natural imagery to develop a sense of time within an otherwise non-linear text. In passages such as the one above, the narrator describes their relationship with Louise in terms of natural processes that represent the changing of time while also challenging the reader’s understanding of normative temporality.  

In this passage, the narrator characterizes themself and Louise as fruit at the mercy of nature’s whims. This comparison to objects incapable of autonomy creates a sense of passivity that is compounded by the verbs “wither,” “fall,” “roll,” “lie,” “watching,” and “covers” (Winterson 90). Each of these verbs represent an action that is happening to the fruit, rather than ones the fruit perform. In the narrator’s phrasing “let me lie beside you,” they reveal that they are content with this passive existence. Simply spending time with their lover until the natural end of their time on Earth is enough for them (Winterson 90). 

This idea of a nonproductive – and nonreproductive – relationship challenges what Jack Halberstam refers to as “a middle-class logic of reproductive temporality” (Halberstam 4). Halberstam argues that most people organize their lives around what are perceived to be “natural and desirable” schedules, which follow a logic based in reproductive timetables and societal expectations (Halberstam 5). It is considered natural that one marries, works, reproduces, and, eventually, dies. Written on the Body confronts these “paradigmatic markers of life experience” by representing the narrator’s relationship with Louise through passive natural imagery, which makes room for “queer time” (Halberstam 2, 1). Queer time, which opposes heterosexual understandings of family and reproduction, is present in this novel’s nature imagery, non-linear timeline, and non-gendered narrator, each which “open up new life narratives and alternative relations to time” (Halberstam 2). The narrator’s relationship with Louise directly undermines heteronormative teleology by diverting her from the expected path of marriage and reproduction, and Louise’s decision to choose the narrator over her husband subverts typical expectations for safety and health. These “alternative temporalities” all draw from natural imagery within the book, which positions them as equally natural – or possibly even more so – than structured and normative understandings of time.