2009/12/02 by Merton Lee · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #American and British Literature Analysis #Marriage and Sexual Relationships #Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/00111610903249856
openalex publication_date 2009/12/02 · crossref created 2009/12/02 · crossref issued 2010/01/01 · crossref published 2010/01/01 · crossref published-print 2010/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · crossref deposited 2016/12/13 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
I read Jeffrey Eugenides' 2002 novel Middlesex as a book that endorses a narrative of heteronormativity and ethnic assimilation. Ethnocentrism is critiqued through irony, first with an incestuous marriage and then by parodying the Nation of Islam. But on the question of homosexuality, the text appears to stage the impasse of sexuality and gender, only to resolve its complexities as a coming of age narrative that affirms heterosexuality.