Cereus Blooms at Night

“An Ant Enclosed in a Circle”: The function of space and Identity in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night “However, I cannot escape myself, and being a narrator who also existed on the periphery of the events, in am bound to be present. I have my own laments and much to tell about myself. It is my intent, however, to refrain from inserting myself too forcefully.” This is a quote from the character Tyler in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. This shows Tyler’s character in his conscious determination to ensure Mala’s story reigns supreme. Though we do learn some of Tyler’s story, he does not overly force himself into Mala’s historical space. We notice this trend of Tyler respecting not only Mala’s historical space, but her identity as well throughout the novel. As Mootoo explores the complex concepts of space and identity in the patriarchal, postcolonial setting of Paradise Lantanacamera, we learn how important those words are and why Tyler does his best to ensure that his story does usurp that of Mala’s. While the setting in the novel is fictional, the issues and struggles mirror the…

Queer people and characters disrupt the colonial legacy in the Caribbean and this paper with explore the possibilities on the part Queer character to provide healing, not only for themselves but for other characters as well. While the novels are not explicitly about the trans and queer characters, they are largely why the main characters are able to heal to some capacity. Cereus Blooms at Night are novels that have, not only queer, but also transgender representation. The cisgender characters…

There is an evidence that Mootoo's novel shares with the readers to invoke queer identities on the surface. However, Mootoo explores these queer identities in numerous ways. "Cereus Blooms at Night" allows us to see the unnatural and natural forces of queer identities that are present in the novel as something deeper in society. Tyler and Otoh have a shared queerness in terms of their sexualities and how they become an unnatural force in their society's. Tyler struggles to come to terms with his…

Creating Ambiguity in Natural Spaces: The Ecological Queering of Gender in Cereus Blooms at Night and Small Beauty I argue that Small Beauty and Cereus Blooms at Night establish ecological spaces as ambiguous in order to deconstruct preconceived limitations around the natural, and further explore — and encourage the exploration of — queer subjectivities, particularly genderqueer subjectivities, in an organic context. SMALL BEAUTY IN THE CONTEXT OF ORGANIC TRANSGENDERISM Nicole Seymour, a queer…

In the poem Wisteria Vines, the speaker uses the motif of beauty springing from ugliness from The Bean Trees to communicate the theme of the importance of family and community, emphasizing how family, regardless of how atypical it may be, is necessary to "bloom" into something beautiful. This concept is stressed in the final stanza of the poem, when the speaker states, “The rhizobia are not actually a part of the plant, but they always live with the legumes: a kind of underground railroad moving…