Gender Fluidity and Queer Identity In Modern Literature: A Study of Thomas Glave’s Among The Bloodpeople and Sarah Schulman’s The Cosmopolitans

Abstract

The study focuses on gender fluidity and queer identity representation in modern American literature by comparing the texts Among the Bloodpeople (2006) by Thomas Glave and The Cosmopolitans (2016) by Sarah Schulman. Drawing on Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, this paper examines how the authors negotiate the complex interrelationships among sexuality, race, diaspora, and urban queer lives. The analysis of the research suggests the use of narrative tools and methods that break heteronormative patterns and reveal the real lives of people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community. The results show that both authors use different yet similar ways of exemplifying queer subjectivity: Glave through fragmented accounts of the Jamaican diaspora and corporeal violence, and Schulman through the banalities of gentrified urban locations. The gap in the research was the inadequate comparative scholarship that examined how African diasporic and Jewish-American queer narratives construct gender fluidity in distinct ways, yet are characterized by resistance to normative identity categories. The paper furthers the field of queer literary studies by showing how modern literature serves as a site of resistance and visibility, as well as a space for the renegotiation of gender and sexual identities outside binary categories.