International Journal of Management (IJM) Volume 11, Issue 7, July 2020, pp. 1488-1493, Article ID: IJM_11_07_133 Available online at http://iaeme.com/Home/issue/IJM?Volume=11&Issue=7 ISSN Print: 0976-6502 and ISSN Online: 0976-6510 DOI: 10.34218/IJM.11.7.2020.133
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MANAGING GENDER (ED) IDENTITY: A CRITICAL STUDY OF SHYAM SELVADURAI’S FUNNY BOY AND BUCHI EMECHETA’S SECOND CLASS CITIZEN
Puja Sarmah M.Phil. Research Scholar, Dibrugarh University, Assam, India
ABSTRACT Shyam Selvadurai’s novel Funny Boy and Buchi Emecheta’s novel Second Class Citizen are considered as the groundbreaking works of postcolonial literature where the protagonist’s quest for identity in their prevalent society is clearly depicted. The word ‘funny’ itself in the title of the novel Funny Boy shows that living a queer life is considered as funny in the context of Indian society and how language dominating public and textual discourses is rendered funny and the word ‘second-class’ denotes the class in which the women, specially the black women are put in the society. Thus this paper aims to explore the identity crisis faced by the two protagonists, Ajrie, from the novel, Funny Boy and Adah, from the novel, Second Class Citizen. By exploring the interconnections between queer adolescence, gendered identity and postcolonialism, this paper attempts to study the neat narratives of postcolonial modernity to suggest the reorientation of South Asian and African fiction as a crucial outcome of the crossings. Key words: Gender, body, homosexuality, black, identity, LGBTQ Cite this Article: Puja Sarmah, Managing Gender(Ed) Identity: A Critical Study of , International Journal of Management, 11(7), 2020, pp. 1488-1493. http://iaeme.com/Home/issue/IJM?Volume=11&Issue=7
1. INTRODUCTION The Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist Shyam Selvadurai has significantly contributed to the increasing visibility of homosexuality in the cultural domain of contemporary Sri Lanka, making way for positive configurations of same-sex love in the public imagination and his novel Funny Boy (1995) is now one of the best known contemporary queer classics. It was also a national bestseller and was winner and finalist for many awards. Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He went to Canada with his family at the age of nineteen and has a BFA from York University. As a South Asian Canadian writer, Selvadurai mostly concentrates on Selvadurai can be considered a member of what James
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Clifford describes in as those communities where critical alternatives [to systematic social injustices] can be and the novel Funny Boy can be viewed as inviting a critique of the social discourses that target queer sexualities, genders, and ethnicities in Sri Lanka. The protagonist of the novel Arjun or Arjie, is the son of an affluent Tamil family in Sri Lanka. He serves as both the adult post-immigration and the young pre-immigration narrator who looks back on his Sri Lankan childhood from a Canadian setting. Arjie describes his transition from childhood to adolescence by narrating a series of memories and experiences and the emergence of his queer sexuality in a post-colonial Sri Lankan landscape that otherises non-normative sexuality and communalises ethnic differences and hatred. The recollections of the past describe multiple levels of where Arjie is alienated from familiar discourses due to his identity. Though Arjie takes up a nostalgic rhetoric to structure his outlook as narrator, these nostalgic - of a fragmented history are undercut by his description of the sharply escalated tensions between Sinhalese and Tamil communities that eventually culminate in the symbolic and literal destruction of his and the subsequent exile from Sri Lanka. While examining th ways language dominates textual discourses which are rendered funny, and comparing its another a stabilizing but violent and castrating forces as imperialism and nationalism. The novel poses challenges to the British colonialism which framed modern Sri Lanka. The novel, Funny Boy, and sexual ideologies. Queen Victoria Academy, the school where Arjie studies before leaving Sri Lanka, can be seen as the nexus of these potent tendencies: the nationalist versus the separationist, the postcolonial versus the colonial, and the heteronormative versus the The novel includes six chapters/stories recounting the life of relocation to Canada following the 1983 riots that presented a direct physical threat to the lives of the Tamil minority. The novel opens in 1972, when Arjie is about seven years old. The f communal riots in Sri Lanka. The Tamil/Sinhalese struggle appears as an on-going cycle of also his relationship with his Sinhalese boyfriend Shehan. Triggered by a Tamil protest against the -grandfather died (ibid.), followed by the pogroms of 1971, 1977, 1981, and the outbreak of civil war in 1983 . Themes of queerness, homosexuality, ethinicity and postcolonialism have been explored throughout the novel. The term Gender usually refers to social or cultural distinctions and the development of a gender variant category is totally unacceptable. It is either treated as a defect or transvestism that needs to be corrected. The polarization of the sex and gender into what theori largely eradicated legitimate third or fourth gender roles. Those who do not behave in ways considered appropriate for their biological sex are regarded as transgendered, for they have crossed over the socially constructed boundaries of gender. Third gender roles and cross
http://iaeme.com/Home/journal/IJM 1489 [email protected] Puja Sarmah dressing in traditional societies entails a system of multiple genders that can exist only outside dichotomous gender systems, which polarise sex, gender and sexuality into categories of male and female. Thus in a binary system androgyny becomes the only available alternative. ( Manisha 2) Movies, for instances, shows the ideal family where a boy meets a girl, and after many songs, dances and fights finally gets married to each other giving birth to a child a boy, of course). This represents a perfect family where the women are beautiful and submissive and males are in charge along with the fact that they are all straight leaving no room for gay or The boys and girls were discriminated and even they had their own The gender stereotypes that is imposed by his family, explicitly delimit the distinct worlds of boys and girls, leaving Arjie caught between the two worlds of boys and girls. For instance, Arjie always wanted to be a bride in the game played on the world of girls and due to which discovered the reality. Arjie's sexuality is negotiated merely within the confines of gender, male and female within these early incidences. His segregation from both the girls and boys indicates that Arjie himself occupies some third space in between these two worlds, but that third space is only defined as "funny" and never specified. (ibid.) There emerges a traumatic situation between Arjie as a gay young adult and the conservative society that does not accept him unfolds throughout the course of the story. His sibling, Diggy, and the other boys mock him for being too feminine, and his father forces him into a harsh new school to toughen him punishments for minor infractions, and Arjie must make an impossible choice as a result. As he grows older, Arjie becomes more aware of his growing attraction to men. Arjie is torn between his desire and the shame fostered by his conservative society. Although Arjie does have mentors and friends who accept him as he is, such as Radha Aunty and Jegan, these people ultimately leave him. The only true friend that Arjie has is his lover, Shehan, through whom Arjie learns to embrace his own sexuality as a gay boy. However, due to the increasing to flee the country as a refugee with the rest of his family. Cathy Caruth, in her work Unclaimed Experience – Trauma, Narrative and History discussed the theory of trauma in f the wound of the psyche, is an event that is originally experienced too unexpectedly and overwhelmingly to be fully known, and is unavailable to the unconscious until it inflicts itself again in repetitive actions and nightmares of the survivor. The theo neurologist Sigmund Freud, but later he abandoned his theory and shifted to the realm of psychoanalysis. incest); identification of the phenomenon of post-traumatic stress disorder in (Vietnam) war veterans; and awareness of the psychic scar inflicted by torture and genocide, especially in The ideas of trauma, memories of trauma are fundamentally important in shaping one individual as it causes further damage to the psyche. he by some type of shock, violence or unanticipated incident and it usually results from adverse life experiences that
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1996). And usually, there are diverse types of trauma such as complex trauma that includes exposure to traumatic events which are usually severe and invasive; post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma caused by sexual abuse, etc. As in the context of female bodies the trauma shapes the narrative, similarly while in the case of the queered bodies, the trauma emerges which reshapes the narrative of the discourse. Correspondently Buchi Emecheta was one of the first African women novelists to point out the various ways in which prevailing social norms and values deny women the chance to develop to their fullest potential. In novels like In the Ditch (1972), Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Double Yoke (1982), she portrays female characters who heroically struggle for survival and progress in the face of enormous odds placed in their way by an obdurate male-dominated social structure or patriarchy made up of fathers, husbands, brothers, lovers and bosses. Born as Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was famously known as Buchi Emecheta. She is a Nigerian novelist born on 21st is famous for portraying the
2. SECOND-CLASS CITIZEN The novel Second-Class Citizen (1974) is a record of her experiences and struggles of life through the fictional character of Adah Obi which is the alter ego of Emecheta herself in the 1960s at the backdrop of racism in the United Kingdom. The novel being one of her semi- autobiographica The novel Second-Class Citizen (1974) is about a story of development of Adah Obi, the protagonist, from girlhood in Lagos to womanhood in London. As the African society is a patriarchal one, men are privileged while women are oppressed. It means to say that African society practices gender discrimination and prescribe traditional roles to men and women according to their gender. And it is the womankind who suffers in this sexism. The first problem of identity in the novel arises when the African culture fails to recognise and identify birth. Second-Class Citizen novel written in 1974. The novel exposes the prevalent patriarchy and how the women deal with double oppression- through racism and sexism. Second-Class Citizen is said to be largely autobiographical, describing a woman's struggles against sexual discrimination in Nigeria and racism, classism, and sexism as an immigrant to Britain. Second-Class Citizen revolves around the character of Adah, who is a traditional igbo women, but unlike other women, she has dreams of her own. Like colonialism, the patriarchy serves as a mode of oppression for women, restricting them to the sole identity of mother and wife, and further propagating the marginalization of women Buchi Emecheta is a Nigerian born author who had resided in England since 1962. All her novels addresses the difficulties faced by African women. Most of her novels dramatize the problems that African women typically encounter in a traditional, male-oriented society. The themes in her works include gender violence, child marriage, virginity cult, objectification of womanhood, sexual harassment and nation building. Buchi Emecheta rejects herself to be called as a feminist which also points at the racio-cultural divergence from Western Feminism. I write about the little happenings of everyday life. Being a woman, and African born, I see things through an African woman's eyes. I chronicle the little happenings in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called a feminist. But if I am now a feminist then I am an African feminist with a small f ()
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Second-Class Citizen mostly focuses on the imperial rule of Britain in the colonial era which has changed the social, political, economic and cultural lifestyle of people in Nigeria. It is evident that the independence of Nigeria in 1960 was only a political development, and the effects of the colonial rule could be observed in the society with the common feeling of frustration towards their own values and inferiority against the British, which are represented in Second-Class Citizen. postcolonial Nigeria and Britain, and in both the settings, because she was a women and that too, black women. Thus this paper aims to examine how - the British colonization. The novel at first portrays gender discrimination in Nigeria. Adah, who was born to a Nigerian family in Lagos, was a very ambitious girl. Though she was the eldest in her family, sSecond-Class Citizen 17). All alone she succeeds and manages to win a scholarship in the highly competitive secondary school entrance examination. And as a result, she was able to secure a job as a librarian at the American consulate in Lagos. But there was a problem that after completing her secondary education in Lagos, at that time, teenagers were not allowed to live by themselves, and if the teenager happened to be a girl as well, living alone would be asking for trouble (Second-Class Citizen 23). So, Adah had to marry. Even after marriage, she had to take permission for everything she spite having her own job had to be submissive under the patriarchy. Even Francis, who was quite the opposite of Adah in success, feels ashamed to let his wife earn. victim of British colonialism. The novel focuses on the condition of the characters in the postcolonial period as subjects of the colonial rule. As Adah was a victim of British colonial rule over the native African community, she had a lifelong dream of going to Britain. From early childhood her father taught her that visiting United Kingdom is like paying a visit to god. This shows that even after Nigeria attained independence, their thought were still under colonial rule and the feeling of inferiority can still be found in the native people. They even considered the place where they live as inferior when compared to Britain. The people who have been to Britain were considered superior to their native people. This proves that the influence of having been to Britain completely changes social status of the native people. In other words, the Nigerians simply mimic European manners and lifestyle, and confirm the inferiority of their native values. entity, though different meets the same fate. Born out of the sense of dislocation, sexism and racism, both Arjie and ot being straight and on the other hand Adah, who was women, that too a black woman could not meet the expectation of the society. Even though the society fails her, Emecheta empowers her protagonist to assert herself through education and self-determination. Emechetas protagonist after a constant fight against sexism and racism, embraces an identity which allowed her to voice as a writer and welcomes a second home in England which gave freedom from traditional patriarchal oppression and stereotyping of African women. funniness nonetheless insists on returning through the sexual/textual tendencies, mocking the notion of any single subject position, be it national, ethnic, sexual, or gendered.
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3. CONCLUSION This paper aims to explore the identity crisis faced by the two protagonists, Ajrie, from the novel, Funny Boy and Adah, from the novel, Second Class Citizen. By exploring the interconnections between queer adolescence, gendered identity and postcolonialism, this paper attempts to study the neat narratives of postcolonial modernity to suggest the reorientation of South Asian and African fiction as a crucial outcome of the crossings.
REFERENCES [1] Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. New Delhi, Viva Books, 2018. [2] Corr, John. Diasporic Sexualities in Contemporary Canadian Fiction. Diss. McMaster University, 2007. Web. 29 September 2019. [3] Criticism and Ideology: Second African edited by Kirsten Holst Petersen, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, 1988, pp. 173-85. [4] Manisha, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education, Multidisciplinary Academic Research, March 2019. [5] Selvadurai, Shyam. Funny Boy. Penguin Books,1994. [6] Second-Class Citizen. George Brazillers, 1974. [7] Suri, Twinkle. Book Plus, 2006.
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