Reimagining Hindu Mythology for the Diasporic Queer Body: Discursive Materiality in Vivek Shraya’s She of the Mountains

Abstract

This article explores what it means to be queer, Indian and brown in a diasporic context through the lens of young adult fiction. Western discourses often offer an insufficient set of resources for young protagonists to navigate the specificities of their gendered, sexual and racial landscapes. Vivek Shraya’s She of the Mountains, an Indian Canadian novel, addresses this challenge by layering the story of a queer Indian Canadian young adult within reimagined stories from Hindu mythology and unconventional visual illustrations. This paper argues that while Western discourses can limit the development of the protagonist’s identity, reinterpretations of Hindu mythology and complex visuals result in a confluence of discourse and materiality that prompts new/different ways of being for queer diasporic youth.

Keywords:

• Diasporic literature
• Hindu mythology
• illustrated novels
• material feminism
• mattering
• queer discourse
• queer embodiment
• young adult literature

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Roberta Seelinger Trites, Nithya Sivashankar and Catherine Keyser for their insightful comments, generous friendship and constant encouragement. This article wouldn’t have existed in its current form if not for their guidance and support. I am especially grateful to Catherine Keyser for her suggestion that She of the Mountains rejects the idea of queerness as separate from South Asian identity and culture.⁶⁵ My sincere thanks to the editors of South Asia and the two anonymous readers for their thoughtful feedback on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, for example, Ruth Vanita and Salim Kidwai, Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (New York: Palgrave, 2000); Mukti Lakhi Mangaram, ‘“Rama, Must I Remind You of Your Divinity”: Locating a Sexualized, Feminist, and Queer Dharma in The Ramayana’, Diacritics 39, no. 1 (2009): 75–78, 80–96, 98–104, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41416229; Devdutt Pattanaik, Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2014).

2. Vivek Shraya, She of the Mountains (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014).

3. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978): 6.

4. Nivedita Menon, ‘How Natural Is Normal: Feminism and Compulsory Heterosexuality’, in Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India, ed. Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bahn (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005): 33–39; 37.

5. Paola Bacchetta, ‘Queer Presence in/and Hindu Nationalism’, in Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism Is Changing India, ed. Angana P. Chatterji, Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019): 375–96; 381.

6. Ibid., 380.

7. Banu Subramaniam, Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019): 90.

8. Paola Bacchetta, ‘When the (Hindu) Nation Exiles Its Queers’, Social Text 61, no. 4 (1999): 141–66, https://www.jstor.org/stable/488684.

9. Nayan Shah, ‘Sexuality, Identity, and the Uses of History’ in Q & A: Queer in Asian America, ed. David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998): 141–56; 146.

10. ‘Homosexuality Is an American Disease, Says Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev’, uploaded February 1, 2016, YouTube video, 8:27, accessed May 5, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ61Jc5ibZ0&ab_channel=NewsX.

11. Parmesh Shahani, Gay Bombay: Globalisation, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008).

12. For more on the political genealogies of gender and sexuality in the Indian context, see Bacchetta, ‘Queer Presence’; Nishant Shahani, Pink Revolutions (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021); Subramaniam, Holy Science.

13. ‘Queers Read This’, a leaflet distributed at the Pride March in New York, accessed May 5, 2023, http://www.qrd.org/qrd/misc/text/queers.read.this

14. Michael Warner, ‘Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet’, Social Text 29 (1991): 3–17, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/466295.pdf.

15. See, for example, D’Lo, To T, or Not To T?, directed by Adelina Anthony, live performance, performed in Los Angeles, CA, USA, 2019; Tan France, Naturally Tan: A Memoir (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019).

16. Devdutt Pattanaik, The Pregnant King (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2008).

17. Tanya Boteju, Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens (New York: Simon Schuster, 2019).

18. Sabina Khan, The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali (New York: Scholastic Press, 2019).

19. Naomi Kanakia, We Are Totally Normal (New York: Harper Teen, 2020).

20. Rakesh Satyal, Blue Boy (New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2009).

21. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 15.

22. Shah, ‘Sexuality, Identity’, 142.

23. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 15, 16.

24. Ibid., 17. Italics in the original.

25. Ibid., 23. Italics in the original.

26. Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter (New York: Routledge, 2011): 2.

27. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 30.

28. Ibid., 31.

29. Ibid., 32.

30. Ibid., 107. Italics in the original.

31. Ibid., 108.

32. For more examples of the re-appropriation of words from regional languages to be more inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community in India, see Bacchetta, ‘When the (Hindu) Nation’; and Shah, ‘Sexuality, Identity’.

33. Bacchetta, ‘When the (Hindu) Nation’, 144.

34. Ibid., 145.

35. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 108. Italics in the original.

36. Ibid., 84.

37. Ibid., 83, 84.

38. Ibid., 84.

39. Ibid., 64.

40. Shah, ‘Sexuality, Identity’, 141.

41. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, ‘Introduction: Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory’, in Material Feminisms, ed. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008): 1–20; 4.

42. Ibid., 8.

43. Ibid., 8.

44. Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’, in Material Feminisms, ed. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008): 120–54; 132. Italics in the original.

45. Ibid., 135.

46. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 33.

47. Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity’, 135.

48. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 60.

49. Ibid., 73.

50. Ibid.

51. Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, Literatures of Liberation: Non-European Universalisms and Democratic Progress (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2017): 4.

52. Ibid.

53. Shah, ‘Sexuality, Identity’, 145.

54. Perry Nodelman, Words about Pictures (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1988): 77.

55. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 51.

56. Ibid.

57. Milena Bernardi, ‘Children’s Literature and Illustrated Novels: Educating Readers, Literary Works and Visual Surprises’, Studi Sulla Formazione 22, no. 2 (2019): 85–95; 87.

58. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 41.

59. Sudipta Sen, Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019): 53.

60. Ibid., 70.

61. For more information on the mermaid as a symbol of queerness in culture, literature and the media, see Leland G. Spencer ‘Performing Transgender Identity in The Little Mermaid: From Anderson to Disney’, Communication Studies 65, no. 1 (2014): 112–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2013.832691; Sally Campbell Galman, ‘Enchanted Selves: Transgender Children’s Persistent Use of Mermaid Imagery in Self-Portraiture’, SHIMA—The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 12, no. 2 (2018): 163–80, http://dx.doi.org/10.21463/shima.12.2.14.

62. Shraya, She of the Mountains, 106.

63. Nodelman, Words about Pictures, 154.

64. Cristina Bacchilega, Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997): 6–7.

65. Catherine Keyser, email to author, April 9, 2023.