MANAGING GENDER (ED) IDENTITY: A CRITICAL STUDY OF SHYAM SELVADURAI’S FUNNY BOY AND BUCHI EMECHETA’S SECOND CLASS CITIZEN

Shyam Selvadurai's novel Funny Boy and Buchi Emecheta's novel Second Class Citizen are considered as the groundbreaking works of postcolonial literature where the protagonist's quest for identity in their prevalent society is clearly depicted. The word ‘funny' itself in the title of the novel Funny Boy shows that living a queer life is considered as funny in the context of Indian society and how language dominating public and textual discourses is rendered funny and the word ‘second-class' denotes the class in which the women, specially the black women are put in the society. Thus this paper aims to explore the identity crisis faced by the two protagonists, Ajrie, from the novel, Funny Boy and Adah, from the novel, Second Class Citizen. By exploring the interconnections between queer adolescence, gendered identity and postcolonialism, this paper attempts to study the neat narratives of postcolonial modernity to suggest the reorientation of South Asian and African fiction as a crucial outcome of the crossings.