Queer Masculinities: Gender Roles, the Abject and Bottomhood in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
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Christina Slopek
Abstract
This article analyzes queerness in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), teasing out how the queer relationship at the core of the novel is framed. Ocean Vuong’s novel mobilizes queerness to straddle boundaries between cultures, gender roles and bodies. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous places the queer sexual orientations and gender performances of its protagonists, one Vietnamese American, one white American, in firm relation to the formative force of cultural contexts. Zooming in on two young boys’ queerness, the novel diversifies gender roles and makes room especially for non-normative masculinities. What is more, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous mobilizes the abject to showcase how queer sexual intimacy straddles boundaries between bodies and subjects. The article attends to language politics in connection with the novel’s coming-out performance, striated constructions of gender roles and their interplay with the abject and “bottomhood” (Nguyen 2014: 2) to come to grips with the novel’s diversification of queer masculinities.
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Friedrich Lindenbrog’s Old English Glossaries Rediscovered
- Mind, Body, and Race in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun
- “You must kneel, compañero”: The Making of Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
- Iconographies of ‘Childness’ and the Contemporary British Novel: Book Covers, Discourses, and Cultural Models
- Queer Masculinities: Gender Roles, the Abject and Bottomhood in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
- Reviews
- Manfred Markus. 2021. English Dialect Dictionary Online: A New Departure in English Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xix + 183 pp., 92 figures, 2 tables, £ 85.00.
- Claudia Di Sciacca, Concetta Giliberto, Carmela Rizzo and Loredana Teresi (eds). 2018. Studies on Late Antique and Medieval Germanic Glossography and Lexicography in Honour of Patrizia Lendinara. 2 vols. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, xix + xiii + 924 pp, 13 figures, € 90.00.
- Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile. Ed. A. N. Doane, Matthew T. Hussey and †Phillip Pulsiano. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS). Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), single volumes: $ 120.00/£ 76.00 (institution), $ 90.00/£ 58.00 (individual); vol. 28: $ 150.00.Vol. 24: Manuscripts in Austria and Germany. Descriptions by Charles D. Wright. 2015. MRTS 469, xiv + 192 pp. and 42 microfiches in 9 sets (1,220 folios).Vol. 25: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge II. Descriptions by Peter J. Lucas. 2016. MRTS 497, xii + 168 pp. and 64 microfiches in 11 sets (2,144 folios).Vol. 26: Europe I. Descriptions by A. N. Doane. With Contributions by Peter J. Lucas, †Lisi Oliver, †Phillip Pulsiano, and Charles D. Wright. 2018. MRTS 532, xiv + 181 pp. and DVD (1,192 folios).Vol. 27: Manuscripts in Italy. Descriptions by Peter J. Lucas. 2018. MRTS 533, x + 120 pp. and DVD (1,011 folios).Vol. 28: Bede Manuscripts. Descriptions by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe. 2020. MRTS 559, xii + 57 pp. and DVD (932 folios).
- Lissette Lopez Szwydky. 2020. Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 256 pp., 40 illustr., $ 69.95.
- Martin Riedelsheimer. 2020. Fictions of Infinity: Levinasian Ethics in 21st-Century Novels. Anglia Book Series 71. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter, x + 246 pp., € 99.95.
- Books Reviewed: Anglia 139 (2021)
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Friedrich Lindenbrog’s Old English Glossaries Rediscovered
- Mind, Body, and Race in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun
- “You must kneel, compañero”: The Making of Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote
- Iconographies of ‘Childness’ and the Contemporary British Novel: Book Covers, Discourses, and Cultural Models
- Queer Masculinities: Gender Roles, the Abject and Bottomhood in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
- Reviews
- Manfred Markus. 2021. English Dialect Dictionary Online: A New Departure in English Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xix + 183 pp., 92 figures, 2 tables, £ 85.00.
- Claudia Di Sciacca, Concetta Giliberto, Carmela Rizzo and Loredana Teresi (eds). 2018. Studies on Late Antique and Medieval Germanic Glossography and Lexicography in Honour of Patrizia Lendinara. 2 vols. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, xix + xiii + 924 pp, 13 figures, € 90.00.
- Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile. Ed. A. N. Doane, Matthew T. Hussey and †Phillip Pulsiano. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (MRTS). Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS), single volumes: $ 120.00/£ 76.00 (institution), $ 90.00/£ 58.00 (individual); vol. 28: $ 150.00.Vol. 24: Manuscripts in Austria and Germany. Descriptions by Charles D. Wright. 2015. MRTS 469, xiv + 192 pp. and 42 microfiches in 9 sets (1,220 folios).Vol. 25: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge II. Descriptions by Peter J. Lucas. 2016. MRTS 497, xii + 168 pp. and 64 microfiches in 11 sets (2,144 folios).Vol. 26: Europe I. Descriptions by A. N. Doane. With Contributions by Peter J. Lucas, †Lisi Oliver, †Phillip Pulsiano, and Charles D. Wright. 2018. MRTS 532, xiv + 181 pp. and DVD (1,192 folios).Vol. 27: Manuscripts in Italy. Descriptions by Peter J. Lucas. 2018. MRTS 533, x + 120 pp. and DVD (1,011 folios).Vol. 28: Bede Manuscripts. Descriptions by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe. 2020. MRTS 559, xii + 57 pp. and DVD (932 folios).
- Lissette Lopez Szwydky. 2020. Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 256 pp., 40 illustr., $ 69.95.
- Martin Riedelsheimer. 2020. Fictions of Infinity: Levinasian Ethics in 21st-Century Novels. Anglia Book Series 71. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter, x + 246 pp., € 99.95.
- Books Reviewed: Anglia 139 (2021)
