Theory: Lbians get om their fathers, gay men om their mothers.
Contents:
- “TO PARADISE” ISN’T ABOUT GAY SUFFERG: IT’S ABOUT DADDY ISSU, DISABILY, AND HOMONATNALISM
- SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
“TO PARADISE” ISN’T ABOUT GAY SUFFERG: IT’S ABOUT DADDY ISSU, DISABILY, AND HOMONATNALISM
And our #OwnVoic era, a persistent disfort lgers around Yanagihara’s choice to nsistently wre about gay men as a straight woman, and specifilly about male-male child sex abe. In 1893, David is a wealthy young man of society a world where gay marriage is legal, love wh poor and charmg Edward but betrothed to rich and rpectable Charl.
They are choosg between one imaged paradise — gay New York, Hawaii, a utopia that beme a dystopia — and another. Yanagihara’s world is one which people wh disabili, much like gay men, exist only to suffer, long for ath, and eventually, wh great relief, meet . In every sectn of To Paradise, all of the central love stori are between two gay men.
“I don’t thk there’s anythg herent to the gay-male inty that terts me, ” Yanagihara med to the New Yorker January. There, the eroticized characters are gay men bee this inty allows the prumed female rear the space to project herself to the liv of the characters whout embarrassment. And — most important of all, perhaps — n center on gay men?
SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
In this natn-wh-the-natn, gay marriage is allowed — although, lendg nuance to the picture, arranged marriag are, too. The “Free Stat” based their pennce on the qutn of gay marriage – seems that, wh all stigma stripped away om homosexualy, around half of the cizens choose same-sex sectn is sence a love story, as David, “still almost-young”, falls for the 23-year-old Edward, a mic teacher.
The openg of Hanya’s versn reads like a 19th-century Succsn, except there’s no fight among the heirs, only vague siblg rentment as the homosexual patriarch announc that the protagonist—the first David we meet To Paradise—will her the fay’s primary home. Whe tergeneratnal wealth, but make gay.
They’re as old money as old money gets this alternate Ameri, where the Northeast has formed the Free Stat fiance of the abhorrent homophobia of the South and Wt. In scribg a homosexual-led rebelln 2067, the 2093-protagonist’s mentn of “racial mory groups”’ participatn reads like an afterthought. In Books I and III, that lnal pe route is upled wh a homonatnalist fantasy that a natn-state permissive of gay existence will save a society, never md the racial and class stratifitn or the imperialism unrgirdg all.