Queer eyes and gendered violence in Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India

Bibliographic Data

ID2179288
AuthorsHakyoung Ahn (0000-0002-5944-367X)
Year2019
Volume55
Issue5
Pages602-613
Publication date2019-09-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2019.1627570
OpenAlexW2955474467
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited11

This article reads Bapsi Sidhwa’s Partition novel Cracking India in terms of the routine gendered violence that pervades the lives of its female characters. A significant strand of Sidhwa criticism has emphasized the unequal class privileges among the novel’s women. This article shifts the focus onto how Sidhwa establishes solidarity among women across classes by portraying them as common victims, conceptualizing their gendered trauma due to the constant threat of male sexual violence, and it analyses child-protagonist Lenny’s sexual development through observing the sexualized maternal bodies of her caregivers. The article suggests that Lenny’s narrative gaze can be described as “queer”, due to her liminal and disabled condition, and that her way of looking becomes a mode of political discernment and resistance. Lenny’s queer eyes expose the condition of her upper-class mother, godmother and nanny Ayah as victims of sexualized violence

Art · Criminology · Liminality · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Queer · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Solidarity · Anthropology · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora · Gender Studies · Law

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