Category: 2025 Class Post

Ambrose’s Desire

“Mala’s abrupt withdrawal was welcome.  It was as though, as time passed, Ambrose had fallen in love with desire itself and the act of desiring was its own fulfillment.  …But when Mala pushed him gently away, he was forced to acknowledge the companion that desiring had become for him over the years.  He was, he realized, unwilling to jeopardize his relationship with desire.  If he succumbed to Mala’s treasures, desire could change, would disappear even” (pp. 217-218).

“[Ambrose] looked feebly around for a knife to protect himself, all the while feeling shame for her and for himself – as though he had been betrayed by Mala, and at the same time wrestling with the notion that she could not possibly, not conceivably have been agreeable to intimacies with her father.  In that instant of hesitation he so distanced himself from Mala that, like an outside observer, he saw the world as he had known and dreamed it suddenly come undone.   …[Ambrose] shrank with the thought that a call for help would expose the shameful goings-on in the house, to which he had become connected” (pp. 227-228).

 

These two passages relay Ambrose’s inner monologue as it relates to Mala, and they work well as foreshadowing for how he operates in the later years of his life.  Ever since Ambrose was a child, he was infatuated with Mala (Pohpoh, at that time) and the concept of being close to her forever, but never succeeded in wooing her.  After Ambrose went overseas, it seems as though his desire for the concept of a relationship with Mala was incubated, unable to be resolved because of lack of proximity, and so only grew.  However, because Ambrose knew little about Mala’s actual life in the first place, and missed out on years of development of her situation, his perception of her would likely have become an idealistic fantasy.  He became much more attached to the sensation of wanting her than her actual interiority, and this persisted even after he moved back to his hometown.  This is why the last couple of sentences of the first quote imply that achieving a serious intimate relationship with Mala came as second fiddle to his love for pining after her, because actually knowing her would put an end to fostering this years-long desire with which Ambrose had grown so comfortable.

The second quote drops the reader into Ambrose’s head just as he has run away from Mala’s final confrontation with her horrifically abusive father.  Throughout this passage, it becomes explicitly clear that his first priority is himself in this situation.  His desire for Mala became more about himself finally having his perfect version of her, who loved listening to him talk even though he didn’t explain the complicated terms and phrases he used, who would travel with him and cook for him, who would fall in love with him without having any baggage attached.  This is why his first response is to feel betrayed – for many years, he had built up desire for a much less complicated version of Mala, and now her reality was disrupting his belief.  The reader is aware that absolutely none of this is Mala’s fault, but Ambrose (at least in this moment) cannot shake the feeling that this is something she is doing to him.  (Of course, Ambrose is also definitely in shock, but reading into how Mootoo writes his kneejerk reaction can still tell us a lot about his state of mind.)  If we read Ambrose’s affection for Mala as a bit shallow, based more on his idea of her than who she has become while growing up, this could explain why his desire for her takes an abrupt backseat to the priority of his reputation in Lantanacamara.  He grew up on the island, and knows how people talk.  Again, he foreshadowed this, in a way: he did “succumb to Mala’s treasures”, and that did not break his illusions, but that part aligned with his hopes and dreams.  When he learned information about Mala that did not align, though, his bubble broke, and his trademark indecision paired with waning positive feelings towards the reality attached to Mala prompted him to extricate himself from the whole situation instead of trying to assist Mala in fighting her father.

Interestingly, Ambrose’s lifelong preoccupation with desire could explain his later obsession with sending Mala care packages and otherwise checking out of his life.  After that whole catastrophe, he was able to replace his desire for an uncomplicated Mala with a desire to rectify his mistakes that night and reconnect with the woman he loved.  He yearned for who he believed her to be, was briefly interrupted by a shocking reality check, and afterward returned to pining after her, but also after a version of himself who would have fought back and saved Mala instead of leaving her behind.

“All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.”

“Now the fact of the matter is that you are not the first or the only one of your kind in this place. You grow up here and you don’t realize almost everybody in this place wish they could be somebody or something else? That is the story of life here in Lantanacamara.” (237-8)

Otoh’s mother unpacks quite a bit in this statement, with all facets pointing towards the oppression of non-conforming identities. First, she adresses, inadvertently, the erasure of queer narratives, even in the conciousness of other queer individuals. By suggesting that Otoh is unaware that there are, and have been, others like him (referring to trans identities in Lantanacamara), she implies that their identities have been silenced or erased. We can reason that this is either because they pass as cisgender as well as Otoh does, or that they have been driven out, ostracized, or silenced due to shame.

Furthermore, it is suggested that it is not just trans lives that are hidden from public knowledge. Rather, it appears that everyone in Lantanacamara has an aspect of their identity that they falsely present to the public –that is, everyone wishes they could change some part of who they are in order to live what they authentically feel they are, or should be. By saying that “almost everybody . . . wish they could be somebody or something else”, it becomes apparent that everyone’s identity has been silenced in some manner because they are unable to authentically represent themselves. In this way, everyone in Lantanacamara is queer –not necessarily in the current sense of the word, but in the older form, simply meaning “odd”/ “different”. This may be a result of an internally oppressive societal nature, but likely also a result of the theme of settler sexuality. The impact of this –from colonization– results in a lack of flexibility/fluidity in identity/sexuality, resulting in the notion that everyone who is not a colonizer is “odd” and must be “fixed” so that they conform to the ideology of what is “right” in the minds of the colonizers. Thus, it is not just queer individuals –such as trans identities– who would be hidden/oppressed; everyone becomes alienated, and, thus, is queer in some manner.

 

Title is a quote by Welsh businessman and political philosopher Robert Owen in 1828; his use of “queer” here is meant in the original context of “strange”/”odd”/”different”.

Returning to Childhood: Agency, Love, and Care

Childhood is central to the plot, imagery, and meaning of Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo — childhood is the time and site of both creation love but also the absolutely brutal abuse and rape that Mala — Pohpoh — Ramchandin endures from her father from a very young age. There are many passages, however, especially in the beginning, where childhood is alluded to by Tyler, or compared to things that are not childish to diminish them. This puts childhood at the forefront of the novel immediately, and in association with Mala in her helpless old self.

“‘Mr. Tyler, I know that you had formal training… but that does not give you the authority to make up rules for yourself. You will always find troublesome residents but in the end, at their age, they are all like children. And when children misbehave, you have to discipline them'” (13-14).

This passage establishes a parallel between childhood and diminished value or agency of whatever it is compared to in that moment. In this case, Sister rids the elders in the home, especially Mala, of their agency as adults by telling Tyler “they are all like children” and “misbehave” (13). Mala had almost no agency as a child — she and her actions were owned by her father, and that connection is made before we as readers even know her story. However, the stripping of agency by others, by outsiders to her life, is contrasted by the way that Tyler treats her as lonely, misunderstood, and in need:

“I sat by her head, slipped my arm under her back and pulled her into my arms. I held her against my chest, rocking her until the first streaks of morning light broke through the pitch-black sky” (21).

As he “held her against [his] chest” Mala seems small, like a baby; the word “rocking” is associated with rocking a small child to sleep when they’re restless (21). Now, instead of child as a demeaning association, the imagery is of comfort, solemnness and melancholy of a crying baby. Someone is there for her in a way a parent would be, not only in a moment where she has no one by her side, but in a lifetime parental abuse as well as absence.

The imagery of a child in Mala in her present narrative as a very old woman is threaded throughout the novel. The imagery shifts to an air of innocence and childish joy and love, rather than child helplessness and lack of agency by the end: “She giggles and twitches her feet…On visiting days she wears a garland of snail shells about her neck” (247). The snail shells are representative of the small parts of love and play she had in her childhood, an image that is established throughout the novel. In her last years, perhaps Mala is reclaiming her childhood and the moments of care and love Pohpoh had amidst the horrible pain of her childhood cut short.

 

Queering Time in a Queer World: Deconstructing Chrononormativity in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

     In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freeman emphasizes the effects of “chrononormativity, or the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity” (3). By and large, society operates upon the assumption that everyone follows the same timeline; “marriage, accumulation of health and wealth for the future, reproduction, childrearing, and death and its attendant rituals” all occur in roughly chronological order (4). If an individual’s life does not follow this “sequence of socioeconomically ‘productive’ moments,” they are deemed a societal outcast (5). But what happens when no one’s life follows a rigid timeline? What happens when time stands still, folds in upon itself, or collapses? What happens when the chrononormative individual steps into a strange, unfamiliar world where queer time is the norm? Such is the case in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Though Alice attempts to impose chrononormativity upon the unusual inhabitants of Wonderland, they resist her inflexibility and seriousness. In a world where everyone is mad, time goes mad, too.

     Alice’s story begins on the shore of a lake when she notices a peculiar White Rabbit with pink eyes. When the Rabbit begins talking to itself, Alice does not find it “so very remarkable” or “so very much out of the way” (Carroll 7-8). It is only after the Rabbit takes “a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket” that “Alice start[s] to her feet” (8). As critic Gillian Beer points out, “[i]t’s the watch that startles Alice;” she does not find “an animal that speaks” all that remarkable, but she is roused by “the accoutrements of adult business, busy-ness” (xxviii). Alice’s violent reaction to the watch implicitly suggests that she has already become aware of the ticking clock of chrononormativity. By the mid-nineteenth century, the watch had become a “token of human respectability and worth” (xxix). Parents, teachers, and bosses all gave watches as gifts to the young to help usher them from immaturity to adulthood. Becoming an adult meant regulating yourself within a “state-sanctioned” timeline that served “the nation’s economic interests” (Freeman 4-5). When Alice hears the Rabbit fret that it will be “late,” she undoubtedly recognizes the fears of a society determined to regulate time (8). As a child inching toward adolescence, she understands that she must soon regulate herself in the same way. However, she soon finds that Wonderland is not as chrononormative as the Rabbit would suggest. 

     As Alice falls down the rabbit-hole to Wonderland, she finds that she has “plenty of time…to look about her, and to wonder what [is] going to happen next” (8). When time operates on a nonindustrial clock, individuals have more time to reflect on their surroundings, contemplate their situation, and enjoy the peculiarities of life. Still, Alice cannot discard the ideas she internalized growing up in a chrononormative world. When in Wonderland, she attempts to impose chrononormativity upon the residents. At the Mad Hatter’s tea-party, for instance, Alice tells the Hatter that he has “a funny watch” (60). After the March Hare fiddles with the mechanisms of the Hatter’s timepiece, it only “tells the day of the month” rather than “what o’clock it is” (60). Alice cannot fathom such a queer way of telling time. “‘I don’t quite understand you,’” Alice, feeling “utterly puzzled,” says to the Hatter (60). In response, the Hatter tells Alice that she does not know “Time” as well as he does (61). Outside of the confines of an industrial society, the Hatter can recognize time as a construct. “‘For instance,” the Hatter says, “‘suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!” (61) As the Queen of Hearts realizes, the Hatter is capable of “murdering the time” (62). When one steps out of a chrononormative timeline, one can see time for what it is: something to be manipulated, rearranged, and disregarded at will. The Hatter can throw a tea-party whenever he wants because he moves to his own rhythm. Not regulated by an industrial or reproductive clock, the Hatter makes what he wants out of life. He represents the positive potentialities of queering time. He represents an alternative “to the sped-up and hyperregulated time of industry” (Freeman 7). He represents freedom masquerading as madness.

     Unfortunately for Alice, she must leave Wonderland and step back into the world of chrononormativity. As her sister realizes, Alice will one day become a “grown woman” surrounded by “little children” (109). Once she leaves childhood, Alice will be expected to adhere to a chrononormative, state-sanctioned timeline. First, she will marry and then have children to share her stories with. Her childhood fantasies will become nothing more than entertainment for the next generation. In Wonderland, however, these rules do not apply, and these destinies are not prewritten. Time moves according to the residents’ whims. The Dormouse sleeps when it wants. The Queen of Hearts lets her croquet match last indefinitely. The Duchess even rewrites astronomy so it agrees with her peculiar perspectives: “‘If everyone minded their own business…the world would go round a great deal faster than it does’” (52). Alice initially recoils at such an idea, explaining that “the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis” (52). Any alteration to this clock would surely be fatal. However, after spending so much time in Wonderland, Alice is not so sure of herself anymore. “Twenty-four hours, I think; or is it twelve?” she asks herself (52). She, too, realizes that time can bend without breaking, shift without shattering, and queer without quibbling. The clock is merely a tool, and often a faulty one at that. The earth moves to its own rhythm, regardless of human measurements. By keeping its own time, it always maintains the right time. Perhaps humans can (and should) do the very same.

Works Cited

Beer, Gillian. “Alice in Time.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 106, no. 4, 2011, pp. xxvii–xxxviii. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.106.4.xxvii. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Penguin Classics, 2015.

Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Duke University Press, 2010.

just give me an easy life and a peaceful death

To set the mood, please listen to this before reading: https://open.spotify.com/track/4wbDALtjwuwBxtMgjuumoi?si=5e3fa87c36e44389

Sometimes I wonder if she’d like me. I know she’d love me, but I don’t know if she’d like me. I like her though. I didn’t like her when I knew her, but I like her now. Her hair, blonde on her head, brown on her arms, black on her… that part. I like how she opened that part up for people, she wanted to share it, to share herself. She wanted to bloom and I like that about her, her desire, her longing. I wonder if she’d like me now. If she’d look at me and see a cereus in bloom, or if she’d see a cereus still yet to bloom, or––and this is my worst fear––if she’d see that I bloomed a long time ago.

I like how she had visions, I have visions too. Visions of her, visions of us finally reuniting. Mala and Pohpoh were “one and the same” (Shani Mootoo, 173) for many years before they became different. Before Pohpoh actualized her conception of Mala, before she broke free from herself and became that conception, that imagined person who always used to comfort her. What if everything is better imagined? Pohpoh felt release––relief––when she woke up from her dream of being Mala to find herself in Mala’s body. But Mala, too, now spends her days dreaming, not wishing she could be Pohpoh, but wishing she could see her again. Wishing she could talk to her. Wishing she could smell her. 

Mala wishes that “she and that Pohpoh could have been two separate people” (Shani Mootoo, 173) and that she could, somehow, help Pohpoh become someone else, not Mala as she is now. She wishes that “they could have been best friends, or even that she could have been the mother of Pohpoh or at least her older sister” (Shani Mootoo, 173). That way Mala could still be with Pohpoh, could watch after her, and make sure that she was “protected” from both her father and from herself. Pohpoh became Mala because she didn’t have Mala, or a Mala-like figure. Pohpoh conceived of Mala and put her on, like a cloak, like a sheet. But now that cloak has swallowed her, that sheet has suffocated her, and she isn’t Pohpoh anymore at all. Mala lives in queer time, but Pohpoh is a time traveler. 

Pohpoh bloomed at night, like a cereus. She knew she was going to bloom and she was going to bloom brilliantly, quickly, briefly. She knew her blossoming would be pungent, she knew it would repulse some people, those people who don’t understand the beauty of death. The love of death. The life of it. 

Sometimes I wonder if she killed herself a different way. Sometimes I wonder if she’d like me, if she’d understand that I did what she wanted me to do, I just had to go and make a stink of it. I wonder if she’d think I’m beautiful regardless. If her conception, actualized, was what she imagined it to be. I’m afraid it isn’t, and I’m afraid I’ve let her down. All the pills and the smoking and the stealing and the hurting––I’m chasing with hedonism. I can’t swallow the thought of the Unknown. But she could, and she knew the Unknown was a friend––like Pohpoh knew. The Unknown was herself, a cereus, not yet in bloom, but already emanating its odor. Already past Goodbye, and past its past lives.

Lexi Love and Venus Xtravaganza

One of the most compelling storylines this season, of Rupaul’s Drag Race which also best exemplifies the themes of this class overall in that of my favorite queen this season, Lexi Love. Lexi is a trans woman and is also the oldest contestant on the season(but she is still only 32). In an earlier episode of season 17 Lexi tells the story of her mom kicking her out of the house when she was eighteen because her mom found out she was gay(at the time Lexi was identifying as a gay man, before coming out as trans later in life). Lexi has talked about her past a lot on the show including a history with sex work, and getting sober from a crystal meth addiction. She talked about how drag and her drag family quite literally saved her life. On the most recent episode(episode 13, “Drag Baby Mamas) the top five queens were tasked with making over their real life parents into members of their drag families. Given Lexi’s backstory, I was shocked when they revealed Lexi’s makeover partner to be her biological mother. Like the other queens, Lexi begins crying tears of joy when she sees her mother. In the confessional she talks about how she and her mom had a very rocky relationship but are now in a very good place. As Rupaul is doing her Werk Room walkthrough, she stops to talk to all the contestants and their parents, including Lexi and her mom. While talking to Rupaul, Lexi’s mom says “This is her dream.” Lexi begins to tear up, saying this is the first time her mom has referred to Lexi with the correct pronouns. Later in the conversation she misgenders Lexi but then quickly corrects herself. Finally during critiques on the main stage Lexi’s mom uses her correct pronouns, which makes Lexi exclaim “she called me she” through tears. In the confessional, Lexi calls this her mother giving her “the gift of trans acceptance.” 

Lexi’s story reminded me a lot of the life Venus Xtravaganza of Paris Is Burning could’ve had if she had lived. They were both abandoned by their biological families, found solace in queer communities(ball and drag), and had a past with sex work. One of the main differences between them is unlike Venus, Lexi only came out a few years ago(I believe at age 29, and she was 32 at the time of filming Drag Race). So she was older when she came out than Venus was when she died. This made me think of the Clarke Forum, Rainbows and Mud, where Nic Weststrate, mentioned queer time in a trans context, talking about how there are trans people who come out in their 60s and 70s versus some who have been openly trans since childhood, and might be teaching elder trans people things. There is also an episode where Lexi reveals she has a full time job outside of drag(this is pretty rare for Drag Race contestants). She then explains how her job is online, and she uses pictures of her from before her transition, and pretends to be a cis man. This shocks the younger contestants, who express they see Lexi as this proud, completely confident trans woman. This also makes me think of Venus and her death because even the most proud and confident trans women are still victims of systemic transphobia. In the same makeover episode, Lexi talks about how she’s been intimidated by fellow contestant Suzie Toot because Suzie represents what she could have been if she didn’t have to go through her trauma. Similarly, Lexi being able to live the life she wanted, including reconciling with her mom as she grew up made Venus’s death feel even sadder for me. Lexi is not better or smarter than Venus, but she didn’t meet the same fate as her. Venus Xtravaganza, and all the innocent murdered trans women in America, could have had a beautiful life if she had lived, and Lexi Love is proof of that. I wish there was some reason I could point to a reason why Lexi came out the other end of a similar life while Venus didn’t but there isn’t one. For some odd reason Venus’s life was stolen, and Lexi was able to become a superstar. The greatest tragedy of all is how easily their fates could’ve been switched. 

Living through Trauma: Emotions and Imagery

“On relaxing she was overcome by the rage that seeped into her veins. At times like these she felt inflamed to the point of wanting to tear and scream into her father’s room, of screeching so piercingly that she disabled him, of punching him in his stomach over and over until he cried like a baby, admitted how loathesome he had been and begged hers and Asha’s forgiveness. But at such times her rage was usually muffled by a sudden injection of good sense. The success of an adventure like the one she was embarking upon depended on the control of all her faculties. Anger, hatred and even fear could very easily trip her up. Pohpoh worked on finding that perfect balance between being rigidly alert and dangerously relaxed” (Mootoo 143). 

This paragraph is incredibly evocative, beginning and ending with “relax” in some form despite being filled with volatility and pain. It explores how Pohpoh copes with the abuse she is enduring. Especially as she takes on the role of mother for her younger sister, she is learning to be wise, mature, and “alert” as a survival tactic and a trauma response. This continues into her adulthood and the relationship she forms with her younger self; Part Two states “her body remembered” despite the years Mala has lived without her father (Mootoo 175).  

The gradual rise of anger in Part Two is fascinating. As it becomes clear to readers that Pohpoh is the same woman who will later be accused of killing her father, more prose is dedicated to Pohpoh’s flashes of anger and resentment. Her desire to “[screech] so piercingly that she disabled him” calls to mind a Banshee. These supernatural creatures in Irish folklore are said to wail the night of a family member’s death—a wail which only the doomed person can hear (Britannica). Given Mootoo’s openness about being born in Ireland, and Cereus’ multiple references to the “Shivering Northern Wetlands,” it is plausible that this allusion was intentional (Mootoo 191).  

Next in the passage, Pohpoh daydreams about punching her father, which reminded me of a younger media connection. I would put that sentence—and Pohpoh’s story—in conversation with the Front Bottoms song “Father,” which begins with the lyrics, “I have this dream that I am hitting my dad with a baseball bat, and he is screaming and crying for help / and maybe halfway through, it has more to do with me killing him than it ever did protecting myself” (YouTube). This song also references rape as a mechanism of colonialism, violence, and gender stratification; what I will focus on is emotion, and how Pohpoh processes her feelings in Cereus. To me, the novel seems informed by psychological academia. Pohpoh feels guilt for “betraying” her father despite doing nothing wrong (Mootoo 212). Even Asha says in a letter that Pohpoh worries about her father in a way that seems counterintuitive to the untrained eye (Mootoo 244). These complex expressions of shame, rage, and fear are characterized well for a young girl growing up in a house of abuse. It is no wonder to me that this book resonates with survivors on a large scale. 

Gratifyingly, Cereus gives Pohpoh the time to feel horrible and angry and sad, but it also gives Mala the time to feel proud and victorious. I was elated by her sass when she told the constable about “a daughter’s duty” (Mootoo 182). Mala in the present is repeatedly described as defiant, in possession of “an insistence of her own” (Mootoo 182). She built her own life with a lush garden where no one dares to bother her. Mala is living with mental health issues and psychological pain which linger throughout the novel, but on the last page of the book she “[trembles] with joy” (Mootoo 249). She won, and her triumph is shared with Otto and Tyler.  

Works Cited 

“Banshee.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/topic/banshee. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.  

Mootoo, Shani. Cereus Blooms at Night. Grove Press, 1996. 

The Front Bottoms. “Father.” YouTube, 14 June 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOXJZ9nh9Mw. 

Trapped by Circumstance

“Walter crossed over his side of the line. ‘This is my side, you can’t cross it!’ Pohpoh said. He stared at her in disbelief. He and his friends burst out cackling, hissing and jeering, as though it was the funniest joke they had ever heard. … ‘Is you who draw the line? Or me? I draw the line. I go where I want'” (Mootoo 86).

“Pohpoh took a tiny piece of blackboard chalk from her pocket. She cut across their path and encircled one of the ants in a line drawn thickly, chalk powder flying. The ants outside the circle marched up to the chalk line and one after the other backed off, refusing to cross. … Within seconds a new path bypassing the circle had been created” (Mootoo 88 – 89).

Originally when reading these two passages, I just found the parallels between them fascinating. In the first one, Walter creates an imaginary barrier – the line – for Pohpoh. While Pohpoh doesn’t dare to cross the line, she ends up establishing the importance of it when she claims that “this is my side.” When Walter dares to cross the line, Pohpoh sees this as breaking the rules. However, Walter laughs this thought off, claiming that since he made the line, he can go wherever he wants in relation to it. So it surprised me when, in the second passage, Pohpoh creates her own imaginary barrier for the ants. She seems to learn nothing from her own entrapment and instead decides to encircle an ant for her own amusement. Perhaps she wants to claim back power for herself after she seems to lose confidence from the interaction with Walter. Even so, the decision to create a circle intrigues me. If Pohpoh had decided to create a line, the ants would have stuck together and walked around it. By creating a circle, she deliberately ostracizes the ant that is stuck inside.

Now, however, I also see how closely the second passage relates to Mala’s own situation. She becomes that one ant who, slowly but surely, the rest of the townsfolk refuse to go near. Her house, her father, her overall circumstances, come together to trap Mala in her own chalk circle. While there is no real reason for everyone else to avoid her with such vigor, just as the chalk line serves no real barrier for the ants, they do so anyway until such a time as it becomes habit to treat Mala as an outsider. Both Mala and the ant believe they are stuck, but whether they truly are is up to interpretation.

Note: I decided to use the name Pohpoh in the first paragraph because I’m talking about her childhood, but I switched to Mala in the second one because I’m writing about her life overall. Hopefully that makes sense. 🙂

First Person Stories

         When thinking of how I wanted to start this blog post, I thought back to the free writes we did in class, because I had many questions about the concept of Cereus Blooms at Night. The first thing I would like to draw attention to is Tyler’s notes on pages 3 and 105. I liked their structure within the book, and how they almost set up the concepts of Part I and Part II. However, the most obvious aspect of these is the fact that their premise feels false. For a letter that is supposed to be for Asha, Tyler uses “I” a lot (Mootoo 3). The whole concept of these starting letters is Tyler saying he is not going to talk about himself. Yet, 4/6 lines are about himself or talking about himself and his efforts, and 2/6 of the lines reference Asha. The word “myself” is used five times in three lines (Mootoo 3). Similarly, the second starting letter Tyler talks about himself and his efforts 4/5 lines, and Asha once.

            My version of close reading in this sense is more about structure and repetition. At first, these annoyed me, because it is very contradictory, and the concept of this book is that it is a letter to Asha Ramchandin about her sister (if that is the case, why is he relaying to her a lot of her own childhood trauma? Perhaps a question for a different blog post). Yet, I feel a lot of it is about Otoh and then a good amount is about Tyler. So, I stress that AT FIRST this annoyed me. Because, of course, I had some revelations.

            We can never separate ourselves from what we are writing, especially for those of us who are queer. When I look at my own writings, whether they be fictional or not, my own biases but also my own experiences are reflected. I do not think we should separate ourselves from our writing. The use of first person, in Tyler’s case, is a direct insertion of ourselves. Frankly, we need to. Without knowing the history or biases of a writer, we cannot fully appreciate the work or analyze it correctly.

          Personally, I believe writing, in and of itself, is a version of queer space. Typically, when thinking of that concept, I envision a physical space, but I think mental space is also important. Books are a view into a different world, and we all interpret them differently. They can be safe spaces as well. As a writer, I feel safest within my own writing because I can freely express myself and who I am. Growing up, I did not read a book that represented my sapphic identity until I was in high school, and I had to seek it out myself. But upon opening that book, I felt seen. I felt that similarly when I started writing as well. So, perhaps inserting ourselves is not as self-centered as it may seem. But, rather, and integral part of our own identities and cultivating a space to freely be ourselves.

The Importance of Names

“Mala wished that she could go back in time and be a friend to this Pohpoh. She would storm into the house and, with one flick of her wrist, banish the father into a pit of pain and suffering from which there would be no escape. With piercing eyes she would pull the walls of that house down, down, down, and she would gather the two children to her breast and hug them tightly, rock and quiet them, and kiss their faces until they giggled wildly.” (Mootoo 142)

One of the key themes throughout Cereus Blooms at Night, are names and who calls who what and who has the power to change their name. In this passage, the reader gets Mala and Pohpoh and Mala interacts with these two as if they were two completely different people. In his transcription of what Mala is saying and relaying to him, Tyler treats them as two different entities. At this point, the reader knows that Mala is Pohpoh. Pohpoh is just Mala as a child. We learn later on why Mala changes her name, “Pohpoh was what her father had lovingly called her since she was a baby, long before the crisis in the family” (200). She decided to change it because she could not stand what the nickname had turned into, something he called her while abusing her. I think Mala is the identity that she came up with to retake her power and the part of herself that she identifies as strong. Pohpoh is the little girl that had to protect her sister, and watched her mother leave, but Mala is the woman who had to watch out for herself. Mala only changes her name after Asha leaves and she is no longer her responsibility, her priority can now switch to protection of herself. 

Something that is similar to this name change is how Boyie turns into Ambrose. When Ambrose comes back to Paradise, Lantanacamara he is now referred to as Ambrose, not Boyie. There is a whole scene where Mala does not know what to call him,  starting with being very formal “Mr. Mohanty” until Ambrose asks her to just call him Ambrose (197). We do not get a reason as to why Ambrose changes his name, we just know he has shed his boyish nickname to something more formal and grown up. It signals a new stage in their relationship, one that is inherently more adult. Both of these name changes signal the end of their childhood and the acceptance of adulthood.