Norm and Deviance: Re-envisaging Gender and Sexuality in Shyam Selavdurai's Funny Boy

Abstract

Shyam Selvadurai's novel Funny Boy is the story of a Sri Lankan boy, Arjies who witnesses his country falling prey to violent currents of nationalism by way of the Sinhala- Tamil antagonism. This communal antagonism is further intensified by Arjie's falling in love with a boy, flouting heteronormative stances of gender and sexuality. In a world structured by rigid binaries, Arjie finds himself sucked into the vortex of his own feelings which seem completely "normal” to him, though his elders sneer at the thought of his turning out "funny”. This paper seeks to read Funny Boy as a text that is steeped in the politics of heteronormativity and one that seeks to interrogate and invert rigid gender binaries that make life for people like Arjie difficult. It seeks to establish the text as a tool of interrogation and revision of hegemonic discourses that propagate ideas associated with what is conventionally accepted as "normal” behaviour.