Hanif Kureishi's Passages of Queerness: Diasporic Sensualities and the Creation of Selves

Abstract:

This paper proposes queer diasporic sensualities as an alternative to perpetual states of postcoloniality. Opting out of prescribed immigrant identities and embracing the transgressive nature of queer potentiality allows for uncategorizable, ungovernable selves. I explore these possibilities through readings of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album, and My Beautiful Laundrette. Though these works chronicle racial, gendered, and sexual double unbelonging, they also indicate a fear of permanent classification. The constant movement of queer, Brown male protagonists through the physical spaces of the metropole subvert normative, colonial visions of race, gender, and sexuality. I argue that landscapes of queer diasporic sensualities allow individuals to escape postcoloniality and position themselves at the center of their own lives. Finally, the essay observes the traditionally gendered nature of diaspora, notes the inertia of Kureishi’s South-Asian, female characters, but also finds openings for freeform identities within a new breed of Brown Englishwomen.