Misdirection : representations of queer women of colour in contemporary fiction and graphic narratives

• Main Author: Earle, Monalesia
• Published: Birkbeck (University of London) 2016
• Subjects: 823
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.690753

This thesis examines the notion of misdirection and queer women of colour representation in contemporary fiction and graphic narratives. Its aim is to analyse the gaps in discursive debates that overlook or minimise queer women of colour subjectivities. In so doing, it develops new lines of critical enquiry that bring into dialogue recurring themes of race, gender, class, homophobia, sexual violence and trauma. The thesis discusses five texts published between 1982 and 2008, opening up critical pathways into the interrogation of intersecting oppressions that limit and/or completely eradicate the voices and realities of queer women of colour. Developing the notion of misdirection as both an analytical and performative tool that problematises ‘difference’, this thesis shows that through contemporary framings, queer women of colour representation in literary fiction and comics/graphic narratives can be liberated from the cultural hegemony of whitecentric paradigms. By adding the visual dimension of graphic narratives/comics to unpack the sometimes explicit, but more often than not, coded messages regarding the subaltern in literary fiction, this thesis places within a contemporary context trauma narratives that fail to adequately address the unique experiences of queer women of colour.