Toward the "Uncommonly Beautiful": Queer-of-Color Youth and "Delectable Deformity" in Rakesh Satyal's Blue Boy

[W]e might be fragile, but we can also be things of beauty.

— Rakesh Satyal (122)

I always marvel at the ways in which nonwhite children survive a white supremacist U.S. culture that preys on them. I am equally in awe of the ways in which queer children navigate a homophobic public sphere that would rather they did not exist. The survival of children who are both queerly and racially identified is nothing short of staggering.

— José Esteban Muñoz (Disidentifications 37)

Approaching "US ethnic literature" as both object and method of inquiry for our contemporary moment, this essay contemplates the question of queer survival. It thinks through and alongside the pivotal work by queer scholar-activist-educators dedicated to creating and proliferating the tools necessary for queers to navigate the world. Resonant with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's haunting proclamation that "It's always open season on gay kids" (18), Muñoz's astonishment above registers the persistent difficulties that these youth face and the conditions that make their flourishing, much less their survival, nothing short of a miracle. The suicide rate among queers and queer youth is staggering.¹ Yet, existing narratives provided to make sense of and ameliorate this phenomenon—most popularly those of the "It Gets Better" campaign—have not been successful in curbing the prevalence of suicide among queer youth.² While this problem has faded from media attention since it made national headlines in 2010, it has not subsided.³ Confronting this reality, what role should scholars of literature play in addressing how queer youth survive in this world? To argue for the importance and implications of this question for ethnic literary studies, I focus on Rakesh Satyal's debut novel, Blue Boy (2009).⁴ Specifically, I follow the lead of its fearless protagonist, Kiran Sharma, to contemplate the practices he uses to navigate his worlds in order to consider the conditions of possibility for the flourishing of queer youth.

Kiran observes his distance and difference from his peers: "The other children I know are living their lives, growing up while I grow apart" (Satyal 205). Growing apart in Cincinnati, Ohio, during the early 1990s, this Indian American sixth-grader with a fierce love for dance, beauty, performance, and men cannot fit easily into any typical coming-of-age narrative. Alienated by multiple groups, Kiran negotiates his peers' bullying, parents' shaming, and adults' demands that he "grow up." As Kiran recounts being teased, belittled, and humiliated, he aims to redeem himself through a spectacular performance at his elementary school's Fall Talent Show; he surmises: "[I]t allows me the opportunity to show my worth to the rest of the school [and] erase all of my past wrongs" (79). Against the devaluation of his desires as queer, weird, and immature, he imagines himself as a reincarnation of the blue Hindu god Krishna and engages in various disidentificatory practices to open up possible spaces for these desires. The novel follows Kiran's journey as he attempts to gain a moment of redemption by approximating the divinity of Krishna in order to thrive in his multiple worlds. Through his performances, the eponymous Blue Boy envisions strategies for negotiating and surviving the normative demands of growing up by challenging the disciplinary mechanisms of race, gender, and sexuality. In doing so, Kiran embodies the queer-of-color youth as a disruptive minoritarian figure that cultivates possibilities for queerness within and against such narratives.

The novel, however, does not culminate in any redemptive moment, refuting expectations for a happy resolution. Configured as a blue flame burning in secret, Kiran's queerness functions as both a vital creative force and a potentially destructive one. As the novel transitions from part 1, "Kindling," to part 2, "Brushfire," Kiran's sexual curiosity intensifies, leading him away from the seemingly benign practices of playing with dolls and dancing ballet. His need for exploring his queerness compels him toward suspect behaviors: stealing an adult magazine from the bookstore, visiting a park at night to witness teenagers engaging in sexual intercourse...