*This research is to be revised and published in Young Scholars in Writing. All cited resources are also linked in-text. Click on the author last name/parentheses to learn more.
“What if instead there were a practice of valuing the ways in which meanings and institutions can be at loose ends with each other? What if the richest junctures weren’t the ones where everything means the same thing?”
– Eve Sedgwick, Tendencies (1993)
Introduction
When we see LGBTQ+ advocacy narratives, we see a certain number of flags for different people on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, the most common ones being gay, lesbian, and bisexual. Similarly, in the bigger political world of the U.S., the most popular two parties, the republican party and the democratic party, are tearing the populace apart into the polarized two.
Such categorization of people can be called identity politics, which emerged as a political strategy to unite people and make their calls clearer in a world with clashing ideas. Identity politics can help people find a sense of belonging with an identity tag and form affinity groups. Indeed, it is a political means in a society where equitably voicing everyone’s different identities is almost impossible. In various pride parades, for example, LGBTQ+ people and allies dress themselves in the identitarian rainbow flags as a sign of amplifying the unified voice of the community (Gonzalez).
Yet, with the overpopularization of identity politics narratives, expressions in the English language become fixed with a certain number of political stances and identity tags in popular media. The established terms in language, with increasing use in political rhetoric, restricts people’s knowledge of the amount of possible phrases to use to describe themselves. Therefore, the diverse experiences of individuals become limited. Using language to tag one’s identity and voice out in the current political system can be useful to some degree, but it tends to devalue the individual experiences that are infinitely different and unique; it tends to perpetuate the norms of a system that has historically undervalued LGBTQ+ and marginalized voices. As columnist Michelle Gao writes at The Harvard Crimson about using identity politics as a form of advocacy, “I was not giving reasons why we should act; I was merely arguing that external factors obliged us to act.”
Standing against normative categorizations is the idea of queerness, which can be a potential way for society to explore possibilities beyond the current political structure of identities that can be limiting. “Queer” used to be a degrading term against the LGBTQ+ community, meaning “strange”, “eccentric.” It was first used when Oscar Wilde was sentenced for his homosexual activity in 1895 (Clarke). It was toward the end of the 20th century that LGBTQ+ activists started reclaiming the word for their visibility (Clarke). There is, however, more than a positive meaning of the change from using queer as a degenerative alienation to as a performative political and social bond. Gender studies scholar Eva Sedgwick summarizes the various definitions of queer as a way to look beyond institutions and traditions. The meaning of queer is not to have a definitive meaning; it exists for no definition but for open possibilities. From a critical lens, according to scholar Judith Butler, the reclamation of “queer” constitutes a self-critical dimension within LGBTQ+ activism, a constant reminder to stay aware of the exclusionary forces that built contemporary activism (226-27).
Specifically, because political constructs like the identity tags in identity politics are constructed through the use of language, it is important to investigate ways in which language creates the way people understand themselves through social constructs and how language can overcome the barriers of fixed identities through queering naturalized identity tags, through queering language in a non-identitarian sense. Therefore, my research analyzes three LGBTQ+ novels in their linguistic queering of fixated identities in existing political narratives and more broadly, in the English language.
Theoretical Framework
I base my research on the framework of “queering” defined by José Esteban Muñoz and “language and being” by Martin Heidegger. Sedgwick writes that the meaning of queerness is “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made” (8). Queerness, positioned against heteronormativity, can be a linguistic performance of self-experimentation, of performance unhinged from political institutions. Muñoz elevates these debates of the meaning of queer in his book Cruising Utopia (2009). According to Muñoz, queering is looking for the opportunities of a utopia instead of only signaling differences. Queerness is in fact not yet here (1). Identifying with the seemingly fixed tag of being queer is performing the desire for an ideality because if people have reached an equitable society, queer people won’t have to be queer anymore, as in being beyond heteronormativity. Therefore, according to Muñoz, “queerness” is a way to envision such an utopia where everyone can be equally open about themselves.
Heidegger’s On the Way to Language (1982) identifies language as a possibility to queer the fixed terms in identity politics. Heidegger refuses to see language as an object, a being for linguistic research (24). Simply knowing a language as an object disregards the very experience of language, including the successful use of language and the feeling of loss in language. To truly experience language means to put the object back to the subject (36).
Combining Muñoz’s queering as seeking utopia framework and Heidegger’s language as object put back to the subject framework, I aim to explore how different experiences of words can transcend existing traditions of language and help writers seek possibilities beyond the current rhetoric as of what their identities should look like.
Novels, as a genre formed on the basis of written language, can be an performative medium to explore the possibilities beyond limiting identity politics through queering linguistic variations. By reading three LGBTQ+ novels in English from different times and backgrounds, my research aims at unearthing how queering language can transcend current identity politics.
I’ll analyze how the authors of the three novels queer their writing based on how they transcend the exclusionary nature of identity, specifically how they use their language in an untraditional way to not regard queerness as a word that is already defined currently. In the three novels, the authors queers (not in an identitarian sense) the standardized language to break down limiting definitions of queerness through their willingness to express confusion and uncertainty in their language, through the linguistic performativity of queerness. Queering the English language is to doubt, to question, or to be confused about existing rules and fixed constructs in daily communication and to probe the possibilities of the forms of the meaning behind certain words and rituals.
My essay will start with Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019). As an English major, Vuong explicitly explores the boundaries of the English language, looking beyond identities with novel usage of English. The second novel The Color Purple (1982) queers the English language from a less intentional but explorative perspective. Alice Walker uses the language of a Black woman who is deprived of education to queer domestic spaces. Tying it altogether is Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), who actively challenges identity politics with her straightforward, almost explosive queering language through the lens of an unapologetic character Molly Bolt.
The possibilities contained in art and the potentiality to queer linguistic and political constructs with the novel genre make my investigation necessary. The unrestrained, creative nature of art makes the possibilities in it infinite. As Muñoz writes in his concluding chapter of Cruising Utopia: “Let art continue to be entertaining, escapist, stunning, glamorous, and naturalistic” (171).
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019)
In Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), a sense of distance and uncertainty about the English language entangled with his shifting identities are manifest in the writer’s queering language. Vuong’s mastery of language as a non-native person majoring in English adds another layer of nuance to his queering of the language in relation to how identities are defined by it. He adeptly uses the device of metaphors throughout the books, particularly focused on developing the metaphor of monarch butterflies’ yearly migration, capturing the transient nature of language and of our existence, prompting readers to reconsider the current society’s fascination with creating fixed meaning for people.
The beginning of the novel reads as following:
“I am writing because they told me to never start a sentence with because. But I wasn’t trying to make a sentence – I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey” (4).
Vuong makes himself clear that writing in ways that are untraditional in formal English gives him freedom to express himself. As a non-native speaker, Vuong has gone through extensive English as Second Language (ESL) training, which usually teaches implicit, rigid American-centric tips of writing that were held at workplaces as a signal of one’s proficiency in English (Dillon and Connell). Today, speaking or writing non-standardized English at workplaces is still an indicator of one’s marginalized identity, such as being queer or an immigrant, or a combination of various underrepresented identities. Vuong challenges such a limitation. For example, when he recalls reading a story in his ESL class, he finds himself unmoved by the teacher’s emphasis on the peculiarity of two people deciding to bake a cake instead of shutting the window in face of a thunderstorm. He calls this “to bake a cake in the eye of a storm” (5), taking it as a normal form of human expression instead of trying to unearth bizarre meaning from it. Indeed, Vuong continues to use a lot of expressive, tabooed words to describe things or people in a positive or neutral way, which may seem out of place, queer in traditional English. “You’re a mother, Ma,” he writes. “You’re also a monster. But so am I – which is why I can’t turn away from you” (14). It seems inappropriate to call oneself and one’s own mother a monster, but in Vuong’s writing, such queer words become possibilities for connection, transcending their original meaning to express genuine characters of human beings not in a strictly negative way. Similarly, Vuong’s grandmother calls him by “Little Dog”, which might seem an insulting name, but Vuong explores non-standard English tradition by saying that “To love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched” (18). One’s relationship with their loved ones can be conflicted.
He queers language and family relationships by introducing the contradictory, layered meanings of a word instead of a simple explanation.
Despite majoring in English in the U.S., Vuong also holds reservation about the English language. Yet, instead of giving a new definition as to how English should be or advocating for immigrant and queer communities explicitly, Vuong expresses his confusion about not being able to reconcile the in-betweenness of his identity, to be confused his ideality of queerness that is not yet here.. “Our words suddenly wrong everywhere, even in our mouths” (31). When talking about using English “inappropriately” while simultaneously forgetting his mother tongue, Vuong questions the certainty of language construction, affirming his identity as skipping among multiple ones. “A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. To open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold” (43). A simple thing as being able to voice is in fact also a form of power as it requires substantive, stable training and upbringing. Vuong points out this problem, saying that expressions about our identities don’t have to be definitive. Indeed, Vuong writes that the true meanings of what we want to express have been hidden “behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it” (62). He also talks about his self-hatred when writing because he’s uncertain. Yet, this book illustrates its beauty exactly in the uncertainty of its words, breaking down barriers of definitive language, allowing for freedom of more fluid expressions.
In Vuong’s relationship with Trevor, he expresses his love and sensations not through traditional, flowery love language, but through an emphasis on vague, physical feelings. “There were colors I felt when I was with him. Not words – but shades, penumbras” (106). He describes his feelings through words, but not through simple similes of tangible things, but through intangible shades and penumbras. This is called synesthesia, which is defined as “when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses” (“Synesthesia”). He goes on to describe his indescribable feeling for Trevor, “He loves me, he loves me not, we are taught to say, as we tear the flowers away from its flowerness” (118-19). He questions the binary limitations of existing language, illustrating the uncertainty he has about starting a queer relationship for the first time, deconstructing rules in the patriarchal society. Vuong’s language transcends the line between words and reality, mobilizing our bodies to feel his words, thus opening up possibilities for us to interpret his meaning.
In addition to breaking down language traditions, Vuong does harness the rhetorical power in English to use metaphors throughout this piece. As the book’s title suggests, Vuong considers the experience in our lifetime to be transient, and thus he uses a lot of metaphors to highlight the “hereness” of his identity. His identity isn’t permanently fixed, but what matters is the current moment of his recognition, which is similar to how Molly focuses on her current identity in Rubyfruit Jungle. Vuong uses the metaphor of monarch butterflies to connect the central theme of his experiences: “The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past” (8). The sense of misplacement – as an immigrant, a non-native speaker, a queer person, a person losing a loved one, and so many more – traces through all his recounts, and staying in the moment is firmest way of his existence. Vuong also mentions his professor who deems gay men as people who have not yet recognized their “tendencies”, “narcissistic” (138) about their own correctness that they cannot help looking into the mirror for their own beauty. However, Vuong rebuts by saying that he doesn’t care about if society calls them “narcissistic”. He then says that looking into the mirror helps queer people become certainty of themselves at the moment, and that is an empowering instead of frustrating thing.
The Color Purple (1982)
Different from Vuong who queers the English language as a professional scholar, Celie in The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker is an apologetic character as a Black woman in the South, but she queers the limited narratives in the English language with her writing. Her timidness seeps through her words in her private letters to God, where she confides her uncertainty about writing in English. As an African American woman, Celie uses African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is not a language expressed through the writing medium like standard American English (SAE). But through her cautious language, her constant cross-outs and incorrect spelling from the point of view of standard English, she has gradually found a way to explore the queering of family relationships with the private space that writing non-standard language provides her with. Celie has never been a traditional advocate character, determined in who she is and what she wants. However, Celie’s untraditional writing merges possibilities that are stereotypically contradictory, such as being “queer” and believing in God, exploring growth through writing.
Celie shows through her writing that tolerance doesn’t have to be regressive, but is a learning process. For example, when Celie writes “I don’t know how to fight” in face of her husband’s domestic violence, she goes on by saying “All I know how to do is to stay alive” (16). This might be read as giving up her right to rebellion, but living under oppressions illustrates her resilience in trying to understand herself, in sticking through to understand the unfair world instead of forsaking her life due to abrupt defiance. Similarly, when her husband beats her, Celie writes “I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you’re a tree” (22). A tree is not a usual metaphor to use, but in Celie’s untraditional writing, it makes the readers see hope seeping through submission. It’s true that Celie chooses to tolerate instead of blatantly rebelling, but she also imagines herself to be such a lively tree growing out of the oppressive marriage with her resilience. What shows her ultimate rebellion under her submissive words is Celie’s description about taking care of Mr. __’s children. “I be good to them. But I don’t feel nothing for them… It more like patting another piece of wood. Not a living tree” (33). Celie extends her metaphor of a tree, drawing a sharp contrast between her wooden, indifferent feelings for the family imposed on her and the lively spirit of herself similar to a growing tree. Although still raising her children, fulfilling maternal responsibilities, Celie has broken out of the emotional tie of a patriarchal family through her resistance in the language.
Moreover, Celie’s queering is manifest through her plain but adamant language in protecting women in the family space. Her sentences mostly include only one subject and one verb, constructing the most concise sentences that are usually against the guidelines in SAE of an intellectual writing controlled by higher education institutions (Chirstoph et al.). For example, to save her sister from being married to a man she doesn’t love, Celie uses affirmative sentences without metaphors or other rhetorical techniques to write about her sister directly. “I ast him to take me instead of Nettie” (17), “It took him the whole spring…to make up his mind to take me. All I thought about was Nettie” (19). Sentences without rhetorical techniques actually become strong in Celie’s writing because of her genuine love for women, sacrificing herself for them without complaints or glorifying her own kindness. This writing queers the standard for flowery writing techniques in formal English, opening up possibilities for expressions across barriers.
Celie’s relationship with Shug, the woman she loves, illustrates how they, together, break down traditional social constructs in the English language. Although in a relationship of enmity viewed from a heteronormative perspective (as Shug is the lover of Celie’s husband), the two women gradually form a deep bond through Celie’s care for Shug. Despite their disputes, their relationship makes Albert scared and beg for the secret to their harmony: “Mr. __ ast me how I git her to eat… I been scared, he say. Scared. And he cover up his eyes with his hands” (56). The two women, beyond shaking the patriarchal center of the family, also bring their discussion of deconstructing social constructs to religion. When Shug encourages Celie to look at a woman’s body for the first time, Celie feels like she’s “praying” (48), using a religious term in appreciating a body of the same sex. Celie thus queers the boundary of a conservative religion. Ultimately, Celie’s interaction with Shug subverts her understanding of fixed religious rules, letting her religious belief become a unique form of self expression instead of a social identity that one has to tolerate with. “Be happy. Have a good time,” (192) Shug says. Shug then deconstructs Celie’s recognition of a God that has been socially constructed as “big and old and tall and graybearded and white” and “blue eyes” (193). Instead, she lets Celie explore her own imagination and faith by saying “God is inside you and inside everybody else” (194), internalizing one’s own free expression rather than relying on external construction of what one should do.
Writing – questioning established constructs, using simple, independent clauses instead of flowery language, using language that she’s not familiar with – has helped Celie queer the meaning of being a queer person constructed socially through the English language. At first asked by her rapist stepdad Alphonso not to tell anyone about the rape and violence, Celie takes her agency to write to God about her secrets. Although a form of expression due to obedience, Celie uses her writing to break the oppression of keeping secrets and finding her own way of expression. Throughout the plot, Celie’s letters start to address not only God but also Nettie after she regains Nettie’s letters to her. Finally, Celie’s last letter is addressed to “God”, “stars”, “trees”, “sky”, “peoples”, “Dear Everything. Dear God” (283), queering the usual format of an English letter and visualizing her ideals in all forms of living around her. Her faith and her expression are no longer restricted to fixed social identities. She can be a lesbian and a Catholic, married but not a wife, a lover but alone. Her letters and her interaction with women allow her to break free from set identities imposed by society.
Rubyfruit Jungle (1973)
Rubyfruit Jungle queers the constructed meaning of specific words, phrases, and logic of narratives to envision a queer reality that is not yet defined, eventually using language and experience to question the political system as a whole. Molly, the unapologetic protagonist, refuses to be constricted by existing narratives of order narrowing identities, but focuses on establishing a fluid recognition of herself in the present moment. She queers the monochronic narrative and existing terms in the English language to explore the possibilities in her constantly changing, unrestricted self. Molly’s story explores a kind of writing that does not conform to traditional standard, which is the polyphonic writing established by Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin argues that a polyphonic writing doesn’t desire structure or closure. Instead, its characters are free to change and grow, finding their own structure throughout the plot. Brown’s depiction of Molly aligns with such a form of writing that rejects restricted characters.
Brown highlights Molly’s anti-monochronic narrative for her own life, resisting projection on Molly. Monochronic narrative is a characteristic central to the English language (Wiese), which refers to recounting events chronologically, with order. This connects with our current society that emphasizes efficiency and hierarchical development, i.e. to go to college and eventually move up in the capitalist company. It’s also a product of heteronormativity associated with a healthy progression of life, falling in love and starting a family. As Muñoz writes in Cruising Utopia, in contrast, “queering staging of the past helps us imagine new temporalities that interrupt straight time” (171). The novel also breaks such an ordered progression of time. It starts with “No one remembers her beginnings” (3). She continues, “Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won’t forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we’ll include them in our future” (3). Molly starts by rejecting to be defined by the control of such a chronological narrative so that she won’t be controlled by society’s standards; she creates her own, present story beyond definitions. Indeed, Molly doesn’t, as expected, go to college with her parents’ support and guidance or pursue a path that ensures steady job development. This beginning of the novel constitutes the theme of the entire story through the deconstruction of the definitive language tradition. Molly focuses on talking about her own feelings at the moment, although they change constantly, as, for example, how she rejects a polyamorous relationship with Holly (152) which might be socially defined to be radical, to be inherent to her identity. She floats above the social definition in a fluid, non-traditional form.
Throughout the novel, Molly also queers English and society by questioning existing language constructs. When flexing her friend Broccoli’s genitals for money, Molly says “It was through him that I learned I was a bastard” (3). Despite her act with Broccoli that’s obviously deemed as inappropriate in a society where sex is stigmatized, Molly doesn’t think it is a problem and has to “learn” that she is a “bastard” for doing it. Similarly, her stepmother Carol also calls her a “bastard” because of her socially unacceptable behaviors for a girl. Yet, Molly only replies with “So what, so what I’m a bastard. I don’t care” (8). When her friend Leroy points out that Molly might be queer, she responds with a dismissive attitude toward the word even before thinking about what it means. Molly starts with the same words that she uses to respond to her stepmother’s accusation, “So what if I am” (63). Leroy, because of his hidden relationship with Craig, is afraid that he’ll be deemed as “queer”, that he’ll be bullied (and already has been bullied) by his classmates. However, Molly tries to convince him to be himself. Throughout their discussions about queer, they don’t really try to define what the term exactly means; Molly refuses to wear this “label” (69), whether it’s positive or negative. In a time when “queer” was a highly stigmatized, discriminative word, Molly ends her conversation with Leroy by saying “Just a couple of queer fish” (71). Queer or not, she doesn’t care, because it can’t define her being forever.
Apart from tearing down stereotypical terms in society, Molly also deconstructs the entire feminist movement at that time, which the audience would suppose that she should be a part of based on her identity. Yet, she says the following about current politics, “somehow I knew my rage wasn’t their rage” (246), distinguishing her own self from the identity that she’s supposed to be.
The novel doesn’t end with formal, conclusive language. As Molly starts to muse about herself, her thoughts wander from current movements to being a filmmaker, from her childhood memories to her future without a determinate note on how she wants to define herself (246). She doesn’t. The only thing she is certain about is her current moment of making a documentary for her birth mother, and this is the way she expresses her identity that is beyond fixation of a certain type. Molly is never satisfied with being queer, but is always standing up for herself in unexpected and unrestricted ways to break out from the contemporary understandings of queer people, to break into the utopia.
Discussion
The three main characters in the novels, through exploring their queering identities, queer the meaning of fixed identities established in the words and norms of the English language by questioning the vocabulary traditions, definitions. They express their hope and confusion about a queering reality that is not yet here. The salient theme threaded throughout the three novels is the characters’ confirmation of their own hereness, understanding their intersectional, queering identities as they are in the current moment instead of conforming to a single explanation.
My research has its implications in the current politics divided by identity politics. Politicians use fixed concepts to denote groups and garner support, but what politics truly needs to understand is the needs behind each individual person. Similarly, many LGBTQ+ activist communities have been labeling themselves, even excluding some identities that have not been currently defined on the spectrum. However, these novels illustrate that being queer is in fact envisioning beyond the current possibilities, to understand that our current definitions of queerness is finite and to break the boundaries in seeking more expressions of queerness. My research also has its implications in education. Thinking with the theoretical framework from Cruising Utopia and queering traditional English, educators can reconsider the pedagogy for teaching English, opening up possibilities for students from underrepresented communities to express in English. Speaking non-standard English is currently stigmatized at workplaces and universities, creating a vicious cycle that prevents already marginalized communities from becoming part of the bigger society. Transforming non-standard English through queering language can thus help us envision a utopia where all forms of language are accepted, where equal rights can be further promulgated.
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