Cereus Blooms at Night, by Shani Mootoo, skews the standard perception of heteronormativity. Through the characterization of Mala, Mootoo creates a world in which boxes are broken down. Mala views the world differently in her old age. She does not verbally attribute characteristics to others, but rather she accepts the world through feelings and emotions. In doing this, there are no standards that characters are held to. There are no societal implications places on others. Therefore, Mala, through her pain and past experience, creates safety and comfort later in life for herself and those around her.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With the concept of binaries, implications, standards, and others removed from Mala\u2019s understanding of the world around her, she becomes a more welcoming and understanding character. She views people as who they are and how they present themselves, not \u201cwho they should be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cereus Blooms at Night, by Shani Mootoo, skews the standard perception of heteronormativity. Through the characterization of Mala, Mootoo creates a world in which boxes are broken down. Mala views the world differently in her old age. She does not verbally attribute characteristics to others, but rather she accepts the world through feelings and emotions. … Continue reading Mala<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2617,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2617"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}