Queer Literature Research Articles

Artistic representation of sexuality and identity in Ocean Vuong’s queer novel “On Earth We’re Briefly Glorious”

The relevance of the study is determined by the need for a literary interpretation of the unique experience of discriminated groups (sexual and ethnic minorities) in Asian-American queer literature. The subject of the study is the representation of a traumatic experience that affects the shaping of various types of sexuality and identity. The purpose of the research is to study the relationship between the artistic representation of the experience of sexuality and the shaping of identity in queer prose based on the material of Vuong’s novel “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”. The goal was achieved by using the methodology of gender and queer studies, the basics of postcolonial studies and cross-culturalism. As a result of the research, it was found that queer prose is a term that arose from literary discourse and practices of queer authors, and contains certain artistic features; the manifestations of sexuality and identity as character-forming factors of the main characters of Vuong’s novel are characterized. The peculiarities of the self-identification of the main character Little Dog, a Vietnamese-American teenager, and the process of becoming part of the queer community are outlined. The epistolary genre and autobiographical nature of Vuong’s text emphasize the close relationship between sexual experience and the process of the protagonist’s identity formation. The analysis of certain excerpts of the novel allows to understand the challenges and difficulties in the portrayal of sexuality and identity of the main character due to discrimination, both by family and society. Bullying, insults, and non-acceptance affect the formation of Little Dog as a person but do not hinder his self-discovery, well-being and gaining confidence in adulthood (in the novel finale). Considering the result, the explored manifestations of sexuality and identity in Asian-American queer prose will contribute to the spreading of concepts of tolerance and diversity; to a more thorough study of artistic texts related to the literature of ethnic and sexual minorities, which have been considered marginalized for a long time.

Book Review - Disorientations: An Anthology of Polish Queer Literature

This review discusses 'Dezorientacje. Antologia polskiej literatury queer' (2021), edited by Alessandro Amenta, Tomasz Kaliściak, and Błażej Warkocki. This is the first published anthology of Polish, queer literature. The editors situate the anthology as the successor of works by Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick and Maria Janion, among others. The review describes the anthology's content (mainly examples of prose and poetry from 1780 to 2018), its structure, and its significance for queer studies and Polish literature.

Dezorientacje: Antologia polskiej literatury queer [Disorientations: An anthology of Polish queer literature

<i>Dezorientacje: Antologia polskiej literatury queer</i> [Disorientations: An anthology of Polish queer literature

Doing Knowledge through Knowing Women

Doing Knowledge through Knowing Women

Queering Mennonite Literature: Archives, Activism, and the Search for Community

Queering Mennonite Literature: Archives, Activism, and the Search for Community

Queering the English Translation of Male Same-Sex Desire in 1990s Chinese-Language Literature

In recent years, we have come to see translation studies as intimately intertwined with queer theory. The interpenetration of the two fields has stimulated significant shifts in how we understand both the nature and the uses of queering social identities and categories. It has also illuminated the complex and nuanced ways in which desire, sexuality, and gender are inscribed in languages and translation. If the word queer is significant both for its “celebration of difference” and in its “reappropriation of the language used by the heterosexist culture,” then the meanings that queer acquires in its translation both to and from non-English linguistic and cultural codes are particularly useful for the study of how queer goes beyond universal notions, fixed identities, or default categories. Translation is “comparably indeterminate and similarly imbricated with issues of gender and sexuality, playfulness, and power.” In this article, I discuss the relationship between queer and translation, and the implications of this relationship for the queering of translation, through textual analysis of the translated, transferred, transmitted representations male same-sex desire and practices, particularly fetishism and sadomasochism, in Taiwanese queer literature from the 1990s. That decade saw an unprecedented flowering of queer literature in Taiwan and, as such, provides a fascinating case study in the historical and social development of the global circulation of queer theory across languages and cultures. I centre my discussion around two seminal texts, Ta-wei Chi’s short story anthology 膜 (The Membranes, 1996) and Chu T’ien-Wen’s novel 荒人手記 (Notes of A Desolate Man, 1994), and draw on William J. Spurlin’s (2017) rethinking of gender and sexual politics in the spaces between languages and cultures, Brian James Baer’s (2020) application of queer theory to translation studies and Douglas Robinson’s (2020) formulation of “equivalencefuck.” I argue that their insights enable an approach to the queering of translation that incorporates queer theory into the theory and practice of translation by understanding translation as essentially a queer praxis that simultaneously fucks with linguistic and cultural binaries on the one hand and with sexual and gender binaries on the other. While fucking binaries plays a vital role in critiquing what is fetishized as source-target equivalence in translation, considering translation as a queer praxis demonstrates that the conjunction of queer and translation offers “new sites of heterogeneity and difference.” Thus, I argue that bringing queer theory to translation and translation studies disrupts some of the foundational assumptions about translation. In turn, this offers new opportunities to queer how we think about sexual and gender difference, cultural dissimilitude, and linguistic diversity in both translation practice and translation studies.

New Polish Queer Literature and its Anglosphere Reception

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; This article offers a theoretical perspective on the reception of new Polish queer literature in the Anglosphere as opposed to an “insider’s view”. The reception of queer literature is measured against the stereotype of Polish literature called “Pol- ish school of poetry”. This stereotype when applied to queer literature interacts with the idea of Poland’s “belatedness” in LGBTQ emancipation which is normatively understood as a carbon-copy of Western models, and not as a unique path. Therefore, the Anglosphere reading strategies often rely on “exoticisa-&#x0D; tion” and a certain “postcolonial gaze”. The case studies are two novels, Michał Witkowski’s Lovetown and a limitrophe case, a novel about Poland written in English by Tomasz Jędrowski, Swimming in the Dark. While in the former the political content is almost overlooked, in the latter the description of queer lives under communism seems brought to the forefront. I argue, however, that this vision in Swimming in the Dark does not surpass stereotypes and also is full of historical inaccuracies.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Queer Angels in Post-1945 American Literature and Culture: Bad Beatitudes

Queer Angels in Post-1945 American Literature and Culture: Bad Beatitudes

A Queer Way of Counting: Bibliography and Computational Approaches to the Queer Novel

The relationship of queer studies to literary text mining has been vexed by the latter's formative interest in large scales, clear categories and general trends, all at odds with queer investment in particulars, details, and persons and objects who resist normative patterns and labels. The history of queer bibliography, especially as embodied by early work such as Jeanette Foster's Sex Variant Women in Literature (1956) and Roger Austen's Playing the Game: the Homosexual Novel in America (1977), however, presents a compelling model for a kind of queer enumeration which is community-oriented rather than externally imposed, centered first and foremost on the task of guiding readers to new queer texts, and which is affectively invested in the task of counting itself: a kind of literary engagement that shows the queer potential of the question "how many?" Using a small corpus of queer novels derived from modern lists of book recommendations—a contemporary form of queer bibliography—I show that, while many kinds of textual queerness elude currently existing computational methods, these methods are nonetheless capable of identifying a variety of queer textual traces, both in queer fiction identified as such, and in presumptively straight novels. While future work in this area will ultimately require more sophisticated methods, these already extant tools offer scholars of queer literature an intriguing focus on surface-level features such as explicit terms of sexual identity—and the work of bibliographers such as Foster and Austen offers the theoretical foundations that new methods must be based upon.

Malaysian Queer Literature

This article examines Malaysian queer literature (MQL) in terms of what it is, its characteristic elements, and how the way it is written responds to the differential treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) people in Malaysia. The article uses the secondary data analysis method to examine existing resources on MQL to ascertain what it is, its origin, and evolution. The article then applies the analytical method developed by Blackburn, Clark, and Nemeth to examine the elements of MQL in Malaysia’s anthologies of queer literature, namely, Body 2 Body - A Malaysian Queer Anthology (2009) and Mata Hati Kita/The Eyes of Our Hearts (2016). The analysis reveals that MQL is a new literary genre in the Malaysian literary scene and is produced for a number of reasons including to open up avenues of discussion about queer that remains subject to condemnation by the mainstream local society. Two characteristic elements of MQL are identified, namely, the multiple conceptions of sexual and gender identities, and the disruption of sexual and gender norms. The analysis also reveals that MQL is written with these elements in mind as a way to respond to the discriminatory treatment of LGBTQ people in the country. The article has implications for current efforts that seek to use MQL not only to provide readers with the diverse ways of being in the world but also to rethink existing discourses that continue to condemn LGBTQ people on the basis of gender and sexual diversity.

The Asexual Perspective: Intimacy Without the Intimate

Human relations and experiences are limited when dominant social orders are enforced through state intervention, heteronormative practices and assumptions, and ideologies that rest on the understanding that there is a right way to have sex. In this paper, queer theory frameworks and discourse are reworked to include readings of asexuality and asexual perspectives that challenge heteronormativity and state institutions of relations. The idea that without sex, relationships cannot be intimate is challenged. Heteronormative ideologies around sex are considered, including what would happen if sex and physical intimacy were less prominent in creating relations This is achieved by incorporating an asexual perspective as a key concept in queer theory. This is concluded through interactions with queer literature surrounding dominant ideologies and critiques of singledom, sexual reproductivity, and kin-making. The introduction of an asexual perspective to queer theory frameworks can expand critiques of heteronormativity to consider the purpose of sexual intimacy in relations

Intersections of Masculinity, Sexuality, Nationality, and Racial Identity in James Baldwin

James Baldwin stands as an enigma: the fiery, race-conscious sculptor of Go Tell It, The Fire Next Time, and the homosexual creator of Giovanni’s Room, Another Country, and Just Above My Head. His essays on racial, and national identities are archived in Nobody Knows My Name and Notes on a Native Son. In life and death, Baldwin’s quest for an inclusive humanism has been received both negatively and positively by black and white audiences. Baldwin has also become the subject of a revisionist impeachment for his unending provocativeness. This ambivalence in reading Baldwin defies an epistemological and ontological center on intersectionality and questions of gay and queer literature, migrants, civil rights, politics, and the role of the artist in the African American archive. This article contributes to critical conversations on periodizing Baldwin and racial identities at a time when America in 2021 glowers under telling dramaturgy embedded in #BlackLivesMatter and #ICan’tBreathe.

Cuíer: Queer Brazil trans. by Various

Reviewed by: Cuíer: Queer Brazil trans. by Various Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey Cuíer: Queer Brazil Trans. Various. San Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2021. 344 pages. as has been said before in various contexts, Brazil is a nation of continental proportions and of equally vast contradictions, and this holds true to how Brazilians and their social, cultural, and political institutions regard sexuality. On one hand, the country likes to portray itself as having the most beautiful, sensual, and sexually free population on the planet. On the other hand, an array of issues related to sexuality continue to be taboo: from sex education in schools, to abortion, to homosexuality, despite same-sex marriage being legal in the country since 2013. In fact, social discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, as well as violence against women and the LGBTQ+ community, remain quite prevalent across Brazil, particularly amidst the current sociopolitical climate, when the sitting president promotes misogyny and homophobia and the religious right has become ever more influential. Yet this is the same country that holds the largest, and perhaps liveliest, annual gay pride parade of all. These same contradictions are reflected in how the literary establishment has dealt with Brazil's long-standing tradition of gay, lesbian, and queer literature—letters, diaries, narrative fiction, theater, and poetry that depict and give expression to nonnormative sexualities. A benchmark in this tradition is Adolfo Caminha's 1895 novel O bom crioulo, which was translated by E. A. Lacey and published by Gay Sunshine Press in 1982, with the title Bom-Crioulo: The Black Man and the Cabin Boy. Critics have called Bom-Crioulo a founding text of Brazilian gay literature; it is not, however, the first Brazilian literary work to depict homosexual desire, as recent critical studies, informed by queer theory and LGBTQ+ social movements, have shown. In this new light, critics have been reexamining the oeuvre of writers whose homosexuality or queer identity had been overlooked or closeted (often by the writers themselves for fear of censorship or worse). A case in point is that of Mário de Andrade, the seminal modernist writer and central figure in the 1922 Week of Modern Art, whose nonnormative sexuality has now been openly acknowledged, allowing for new critical readings of his work. Worthy of attention, too, is the rich and varied body of poetry and fiction by twentieth-century Brazilian female authors who have written about lesbian characters and desire, like Gilka Machado, whose erotic poetry published in the first decades of the 1900s led to malicious attacks against the poet. In the second half of the century, numerous women writers focused on lesbian desire and relationships in their fiction, including literary giants Clarice Lispector and Lygia Fagundes Telles, not to mention openly lesbian authors like novelist Cassandra Rios, who was heavily censored during the military dictatorship, and poet Leila Míccolis. The bilingual Portuguese/English collection Cuíer: Queer Brazil is a valuable addition to the significant body of gay, lesbian, and queer Brazilian literature, foremost because of the outstanding selection of writers it brings together. Two iconic names of Brazil's contemporary urban literature figure among them: Caio Fernando Abreu (1948–1996) and Ana Cristina Cesar (1952–1983), both of whom were widely acclaimed by the public and critics with the publication in 1982 of Abreu's book of short stories, Morangos mofados (recently released by Archipelago Books in a translation by Bruna Dantas Lobato), and of Cesar's collection of poetry, A teus pés (At your feet). Abreu's and Cesar's works resonated particularly among a young readership, as they gave voice to the discontents and sense of displacement of those generations that lived through Brazil's military dictatorship and its immediate aftermath. Other well-known names in the collection are novelists João Gilberto Noll and Wilson Bueno, and, from a younger generation, fiction writers Cidinha da Silva and Carol Bensimon and poet Angélica Freitas. Cuíer also presents new authors who are just starting to gain recognition in Brazil, among them Tatiana Nascimento, Raimundo Neto, and Cristina Judar. The diversity of voices in the volume certainly represents one of its greatest appeals. Not only...

Belly Mommy, Heart Mommy: Queer Children’s Literature in Israel

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, only 23 Queer literary works have been published for children and adolescence in Hebrew. This paper examines the characteristics of these works in light of the ambivalent and controversial status of the LGBTQ+ Community in Israel. The findings show that the few works that have been published and that present same-sex families or LGBTQ+ characters, and the manner in which Queer themes are presented in those texts, are in line with how these issues are perceived and addressed by Israeli society. Moreover, this article divides the Queer Israeli literature for children and youth into three categories: implied Queer literature that hides the Queer existence through the allegoric genre; Queerphobic literature that seemingly presents the Queer family but in actual fact promotes homophobic stereotypes; and Queer literature that places the LGBTQ+ character or family in the center of the story without passing judgement or criticism.

Fashioning feminism: how Leandra Medine and other Man Repeller authors blog about choice and the gaze

Leandra Medine indicates that she wants the Man Repeller multi-author blog to ‘serve as an open forum for women to draw their own conclusions’ instead of making ‘any sort of feministic statement’. Medine renders feminism as amorphous and an individual choice but she has been widely lauded for offering a feminist engagement in fashion. Her practices and position, as I argue throughout this article, allow her to fashion feminism, including associating feminism with the man repeller style and replacing aspects of second wave and rights-based feminisms with the purportedly more equitable and liberating website ethos of choice and equality feminism. Yet in replacing ‘feministic’ critiques with promises of stylish cultural change and clothing that reportedly repels men, Medine and other Man Repeller authors elide how systemic oppression functions. This ambivalent relationship to feminism, and dearth of intersectional advocacy, prompted a backlash in 2020. Critics interrogated Medine's facile statement about #BlackLivesMatter, the company's lack of diversity and the unsuccessful restructuring of the blog. As a means of analysing Man Repeller, I employ textual analysis, feminist and queer literature and media theory. I define fashioning feminism as a collaborative and ongoing process of producing feminist positions and thinking, including the negation of certain forms of feminism. I assert that attending to the fashioning of feminism can foreground central and developing feminist theories; the appeal, unstylishness and effacement of feminism; and the connection between style and politics. This includes readers’ interrogations of Man Repeller's politics, which are occurring along with contemporary examinations of racism. Since fashioning feminism is a collaborative and ongoing process of producing feminist positions and thought, engaging with its concepts and debates can further the critical study of feminism, nurture feminist conversations and advocate for social change.

Queer Love, Literature and Philosophy. On Reading The Argonauts

In this article, I suggest Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts challenges “epistemic habits” in contemporary critical thought on gender, politics, sexuality, intimacy, identity, and love. In particular, I focus on how Nelson through descriptions of queer life, love, and kinship articulates moral-existential and queer-philosophical perspectives on everyday life by bringing the “I-You” relationship to the fore of feminist and queer theoretical concerns. By reading Nelson with the philosophy of Wittgenstein, I discuss how love is related to views on language and what it means to say that one can have, as well as lack a faith in words, other people and linguistic meaning. The Argonauts, I argue, shows us the importance of acknowledging moral-existential perspectives of gender and identity and their role in I-You relations. The article raises questions of how to understand the relationship between theory, philosophy, and ordinary language in relation to cultural critique and criticism (Butler 1990; Sedgwick 2003). It also discusses love as a perspective one might take and have in life and to other people in general, not exclusively as romantic love, but as a philosophical perspective in thinking about gender, identity, politics, love, and intimacy.

The literary field of queer cultural production in contemporary India: considering popular queer texts via Bourdieu

In The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu puts forward the idea that culture is discursively produced and that the field that informs, constitutes, and problematizes cultural production is crucial towards understanding how cultural transactions, dynamics, and politics work. Since literature is a key marker of society’s outlook on and reception of sensitive subjects like non-heteronormativity, this article focuses on the queer literary field – LGBTQ+-related texts and publication – in/of contemporary India. To this end, I look into trends in publication of Indian queer literary texts in English since 1976 through Bourdieu’s concept of the cultural production of the field of queer literature and consider popular texts like Shikhandi: And Other Queer Tales They Don’t Tell You; Our Impossible Love; She Swiped Right into my Heart, and read them vis-à-vis Bourdieu’s theorization, in order to conceptualize an idea about how texts and contexts interact with each other towards (re-)producing and (re-)constructing contemporary queer culture(s) in the Indian context.

Review of &lt;i&gt;Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature and Culture&lt;/i&gt;

In lieu of an abstract: Derritt Mason writes in his Introduction to <em>Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature</em> and Culture, “I hope to move beyond a conception of queer YA as a literary genre grounded in visibility and coherent sexual identity, arguing instead for an affective trans-media approach that complicates and enhances the way we […] think and write about queer YA, children’s literature, and genre” (18). Mason opens his examination of YA literature and culture by highlighting the work of Frances Hanckel and John Cunningham, noting that the “important work of positively role modeling gay youth and properly educating heterosexual readers […] is undone by the persistent twinning of homosexuality and hopelessness” (3). As educators, librarians, scholars, and other critics of YA literature work to evaluate queer representation within the field, some, such as Michael Cart and Christine Jenkins, make note of the belief that queer literature can and should continue to grow and improve, that the anxieties which have existed for decades can be addressed and fixed, creating a literature that is positive and helpful. Mason argues, “YA critics desire a version of the genre that will provide young readers with the fictional role models ostensibly necessary to their thriving. For queer YA’s young protagonists, however, the future is often managed by anxiously delaying its arrival” (14). It is this tension between the desire for forward movement and the stalling of the present, while looking to an uncertain queer future, that Mason turns to throughout the remainder of the text.

Mapping queer literature in translation: A survey of globalized queer fiction produced in Taiwan in 1990s

ABSTRACT 1990s witnessed the liberation of previously disregarded voices―such as those of homosexuals in Taiwan. Intellectual pluralism and homosexual visibility began to flourish during this remarkable decade, while the concept of queer emerged on the island’s academic and literary landscapes as a response to the globalized queerness. This paper is an attempt to testify the validity of a remodeled criteria in light of four Taiwan-made queer novels in the 1990s in transnational circulation. This article first looks at the historical context of Taiwan in the 1990s that favored the production of queer texts. Adopting a revised “International Recognition Indicators” model, this article outlines how four Taiwanese queer novels have transformed from local stardom to transnational visibility by examining how they have been critiqued and received by global readers. The nexus of this essay is to identify the “worlding” power, operation, and problems arising from translations that constitute the landscape of Taiwanese queer fiction in the 1990s. Findings show that the island’s peculiar queerness hinges on translation proper and manifold internal/external forces as a whole to make it a readily accessible cross-cultural commodity.

Comparative Literature: The View from Appalachia

Abstract Upper level undergraduate classes as well as graduate seminars often provide the opportunity for some teaching faculty to not only incorporate their current research into their teaching but also develop and experiment with different concepts, which later find their way in published articles or books. However, for others, the classroom is not just a space that enables one to brainstorm ideas for future publication on a given subject; instead, the process of designing a syllabus, the selection of a theme, the decision to highlight or mitigate specific voices, experiences, and representations in order to achieve specific learning outcomes constitute, in and of themselves, the focal subject of analysis. It is by examining the ongoing construction and reconstruction of a syllabus from a Comparative Queer Theory and Literature course that this article examines the invisibility of Appalachian and Kenyan queer identities in prevailing theoretical visualizations of queer spaces across cultural contexts. In particular, the article analyzes how specific Kenyan and Appalachian texts employ similar rhetorical strategies to contest heteronationalist and metronormative narratives that have been used to efface the visibility of queer subjectivities and practices within the local cultural milieus from which they stem.