the ministry of utmost happiness sparknotes

In this regard, it is important to understand postmodern feminist Judith Butler’s argument on ‘performativity’ and how the confining traditional binaries perpetuate sexism.īutler explains how sexual identities are nothing but social constructs.

Gender norms and stereotypes are serious constraints for Aftab, whose identity is in a flux. Growing up, Aftab struggles to suppress their ‘feminine’ behaviour and feels claustrophobic in a patriarchal, conservative, religious family. She tries to cover up the child’s identity until it is no longer a plausible idea. Instead, the reality of begetting a Muslim “hijra” was not what Jahanara Begum was prepared for. After three girl children, Aftab was supposed to be the ‘coveted’ boy who would carry forward the family name. When Anjum’s (Aftab) mother, Jahanara Begum, discovers a ‘girl-part’ in her child, she is shocked beyond belief. Gender identities, caste and class hierarchies, the ills of neoliberalism and globalisation are some of the major thematic concerns in Roy’s novel. All of them are struggling to find their own voice and a listener. Tilottama or Tilo, who is married to a journalist from a diplomatic family, and others. This community of outsiders is populated by the prime mover of the story, Anjum, a Muslim trans woman, Saddam Hussain (Dayachand), a blind Dalit youngster, Saddam’s father, a Dalit cattle-skinner (family of chamars who collect cow carcasses]), Dr Azad Bhartiya, an academic-turned-activist, ‘dark-skinned’ S. Roy brings the outsiders of society to the centre. These stories stem from situations of grief, abandonment, anger, helplessness, and above all, a lack of agency and subjectivity. It is composed of a variety of unrelated, fractured narratives, unified by one character – Anjum. Roy’s storytelling does not follow a linear pattern. Written 20 years after The God of Small Things, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness opens a universe of the marginalised, voiceless, and the disenfranchised to its readers. Arundhati Roy’s novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness begins in a graveyard – a place for the dead – where the protagonist lives.

The ministry of utmost happiness sparknotes