Date of Award
Summer 8-2012
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
English
Department
English
Major Professor
Elizabeth Steeby
Second Advisor
Doreen Piano
Third Advisor
John Hazlett
Abstract
In “‘Bury Your Head Between My Knees and Seek Pardon’: Gender, Sexuality, and National Conflict in John Okada’s 1957 novel, No-No Boy,” I analyze the ways in which the complexities of gendered sexuality expressed by protagonist Ichiro Yamada intersect with post-World War II and Internment-era national identifications for American nisei. I demonstrate that this apparent story of one man’s pursuit to resolve his conflict over national identity is, in reality, a tour de force of literary subversion that not only destabilizes the subterfuge that surrounded internment but also—in its deliberate failure to resolve questions of national conflict on the basis of masculine and heterosexual norms—encourages skepticism about the larger structures of order that allowed internment to happen.
Creative Commons License
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Recommended Citation
Thomas, Patricia A., "“Bury Your Head Between My Knees and Seek Pardon”: Gender, Sexuality, and National Conflict in John Okada’s No-No Boy" (2012). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1517.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1517
Included in
American Literature Commons, Asian American Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, History of Gender Commons
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.