Deconstructing the Heteronormative: Trans and Non-Binary Subjectivities in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and A. Revathi’s The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story

Lilack Biswas

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Dinabandhu Mahavidyalaya

Email id lilackbiswas@gmail.com

Abstract

This paper critically examines how contemporary Indian English literature deconstructs heteronormative ideologies through the representation of trans and non-binary subjectivities, with specific reference to Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and A. Revathi’s The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story. Employing theoretical frameworks from queer theory, transgender studies, and postcolonial critique—particularly the works of Judith Butler, Susan Stryker, and Gayatri Gopinath—this study explores how these texts resist normative constructs of gender and sexuality. Roy’s fictional portrayal of Anjum, a hijra woman navigating marginalization and political violence, and Revathi’s autobiographical account of her journey toward self-identification and activism, both disrupt binary gender models and heteronormative institutions such as the family, the nation-state, and religion. The analysis focuses on themes of embodiment, kinship, narrative form, and spatial reclamation, highlighting how these texts create discursive and imaginative spaces for gender nonconformity. Together, they foreground literature as a site of resistance, visibility, and transformation in the ongoing struggle for gender justice in postcolonial India.

Keywords: Heteronormativity, Transgender Subjectivity, Queer Resistance, Gender Performativity,  Indian English Literature.

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