Department of English and American Studies the Self-Identity Journey Of

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Karolína Zlámalová The Self-Identity Journey of Non-Binary Protagonists in Freshwater, Sissy and Gender Queer Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.A., Ph.D. 2020 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Bc. Karolína Zlámalová I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.A., Ph.D. for his guidance, valuable advice and understanding. Thank you H. Table of contents Introduction 1 The primary texts 3 Terminology 5 Chapter 1: Common themes in a nonbinary memoir 8 1. 1 Language 8 1. 1. 1 Names & terminology 9 1. 1. 2 Pronouns 18 1. 1. 3 Figurative language & animal symbolism 22 1. 2 Body 24 1. 2. 1 Clothing 25 1. 2. 2 Appearance 31 1. 2. 3 Physical and mental health 34 1. 2. 4 Healthcare 46 1. 3 People 49 1. 3. 1 Politics 49 1. 3. 2 Family 51 1. 3. 3 Relationships 54 1. 3. 4 Queer mentor & public figure 58 Chapter 2: Identity in a nonbinary memoir 63 2. 1 Life writing 63 2. 1. 1 History of life writing genres 63 2. 1. 2 Postmodern influence on life writing 65 2. 1. 3 Queer life writing 68 2. 2 Identity in the primary texts 75 2. 2. 1 Coming out 78 2. 2. 2 Stability of identity 82 2. 2. 3 Stability of gender 84 Conclusion 89 Works Cited 95 Summary 98 Resumé 99 Introduction “Did you know that for significant portion of the ancient world, there was no word for the color blue? (…) It isn’t mentioned once in The Odyssey, in the entirety of the ancient Greek canon, or in thousands of other ancient texts. Homer was famous for writing not about the deep blue sea but about the wine-dark sea. Without a word for “blue,” the color of wine was the closest Homer could come to describe the brooding, tumultuous ocean. When I look back on my early childhood and adolescence, I feel like a Greek poet: staring at the sky, marveling at the Mediterranean Sea, gazing deeply into a piece of lapis lazuli, confounded.” (Tobia 95-6) Jacob Tobia in their memoir Sissy compares the lack of words they had in their childhood and youth to the world without a word for color blue. For most people, their gender and gender identity are concepts about which they do not think about often or in detail; and if they do, they have the privilege of having available terms to name themselves. For some like Tobia, however, thinking about their gender identity meant thinking about something which they cannot name. How does one formulate their identity if they cannot name it? Jacob Tobia, Maia Kobabe and Akwaeke Emezi’s Ada grapple with this question in autobiographical works Sissy, Gender Queer and Freshwater, which describe lives of protagonists who identify as nonbinary or genderqueer. This Master’s diploma thesis deals with the emerging genre of a nonbinary memoir and attempts to answer the question as to how the way in which the authors narrate their life stories and portray their identities positions their texts into a wider genre of a queer memoir. It discusses the elements these three texts share and whether and how these similarities reflect and relate to the gender identity of their respective authors. 1 In the opening part of the thesis, three primary texts are introduced, alongside with the terminology regarding different gender identities which appear in the texts. In the first chapter, the primary texts will be analyzed and several common elements and themes are presented. The areas covered are firstly language, specifically the idea of naming and terminology (or lack of thereof) and use of figurative language; secondly themes related to bodies, clothing and outer appearance, and mental and physical wellness; lastly the interpersonal relationships and the role of community. The connections between these themes and the specifics of a narration of a nonbinary life are discussed and briefly compared with the presence (or absence) and the depiction of these themes in more traditional queer memoirs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and binary transgender authors. The second chapter firstly introduces the genre of life writing and the impact of postmodernism and queer on it. It points to the differences between identities based on sexuality and on gender identity in a memoir. Secondly it concentrates on the way identities are constructed in a queer memoir, and more specifically on how the authors of the primary texts portray their identities. By this it answers the main question of the thesis and suggests possible specifics of the emerging genre of a nonbinary memoir. The primary texts were chosen because all three are autobiographical works set in the contemporary United States, were published in the last two years, their authors are young and identify as nonbinary or genderqueer, and these texts were their debut full-length work. Therefore, the thesis provides an opportunity to engage with the emerging genre through strongly contemporary texts. Apart from the primary texts, the thesis draws partially on sociology works such as Eris Young’s They/Them/Their, but mainly on literary-theoretical works on queer memoir such as articles by scholars like Julie A Minich, Margaretta Jolly, Brian Loftus and others. The relative novelty of the genre presents certain challenges such as 2 the lack of literary theoretical works dealing specifically with the genre of a nonbinary and genderqueer memoir. The primary texts The three primary texts the thesis addresses share their recent publication date, country of publication, young age of the authors and their nonnormative gender identity. However, each author approaches the text differently; Sissy by Jacob Tobia takes the form of a traditional memoir, Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi is an autobiographical novel and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe is a graphic memoir. Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story by an actor, performer, writer and producer Jacob Tobia was published in 2019. Tobia uses pronouns they/them/their. Their memoir describes their childhood and teenage years in North Carolina, and young adulthood as a student and an activist at Duke University and as a United Nation ambassador in Washington. It describes in great detail the struggles with their gender which Tobia experienced, and the journey that led to their current gender identity. Tobia also engages at length with relationships with their parents and peers, and with different communities, such as their church. The tone of the text is generally light-hearted and humorous but does not shy away from including traumatic events of the author’s life with openness and (according to the text on their webpage) with a “fierce honesty” and “wrenching vulnerability” (“Sissy”). Tobia acknowledges in “A Quick Manifesto” that while for the sake of honestly they decided to include also the traumatic events of their life, they would like to avoid what they call a “Trans Narrative©”, and “My Classical, Binary Transgender Story” (Tobia 12), which they consider simplistic and problematic in a sense that it “glamorizes trauma” (15). This deliberate attempt to challenge the traditional way stories of transgender individuals are narrated and presented is one of the key features of the text. 3 Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi is an autobiographical novel describing the life of Ada, who is born in Nigeria to Nigerian and Tamil parents, and leaves for the United States to pursue her college education. The story follows Ada’s childhood in Nigeria, her relationship with her parents, and the changes which moving to a new country and culture brought her. The story is narrated in a lyrical and imaginative way, and does not deal in great detail with specifics of Ada’s everyday life (the reader for example never learns what is Ada’s job). On the other hand, it dedicates a great amount of attention to Ada’s inner experience as well as to her romantic and sexual relationships, which are informed by the trauma of sexual abuse she repeatedly experiences. Though the story partially includes elements, which a Western reader might deem supernatural, Emezi insists on the book being “a breath away from being a memoir” (Akbar). Ada’s life story is primarily narrated by spirits Asughara and Saint Vincent inhabiting her body, because Ada is “born with one foot on the other side” (Emezi, from the dedication of Freshwater). Emezi explains that the spirits are ọgbanje, who “are children who die over and over again. They are considered to be tricksters, torturing their parents who hope they will stay alive” (Akbar). Depending on Ada’s life situation and relationships the voices within her gain prominence or recede into the background. The story draws heavily on western African Igbo ontology (Akbar), therefore even the term “spirits inhabiting Ada’s body” is problematic, because according to Emezi, this is another binary they are attempting to avoid: “people think in binaries a lot, so that one thing has to be possessed by another. But with ọgbanje, these things are collapsed” (Akbar). The text therefore also approaches the issues related to gender from a different perspective than a text written by a Western writer like Tobia or Kobabe, though it is important to avoid creating another unnecessary binary – Western and non-Western – and also to keep in mind that Emezi has been living in the United States for years and is well familiar with the Western context. Moreover, the text intersectionally includes not only topics of gender and sexuality, but also 4 issues of race and colonial status.

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