Queer Communal Postcolonial Happiness in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names and Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Abstract

Abstract:When one examines recent scholarship on queer and postcolonial individuals, happiness is generally not the first quality that comes to mind. This paper will demonstrate, however, that while queer theory's insistence on the right to be unhappy appears contradictory to the politics of postcolonial happiness, queer theory's concepts of alternate temporalities and queer futurity have much to add to the conversation surrounding postcolonial happiness, as put forth by Ananya Jahanara Kabir in The Postcolonial World.An application of the concepts of queer temporalities and queer futurities to the lens of postcolonial happiness can serve as a way to increase postcolonial resistance, reclaim pleasure, and resist disempowerment for the future postcolonial subject. In this paper, I will apply the lens of postcolonial happiness and queer temporality to Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names. I intend to demonstrate the varied range of possibilities for increasing postcolonial pleasure and resistance, both individually and communally, using queer temporalities. My dual analysis of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and We Need New Names will highlight the postcolonial resistance within the text, including a return to—or creation of—happy memories and a production of a queer, alternate temporalities: spaces and places. My examination of the differing approaches to postcolonial happiness will reveal how a construction of distinctly queer postcolonial resistance is present in the familial structures within the text, modeling a literary representation of queer, postcolonial, and trans activism for future generations.