: Payal Dhar’s YA novel with a queer theme runs the risk of over-simplifying the complexities #IndiaNEWS Payal Dhar begins her Young Adults novel It Has No Name with a story of harassment. An old man,

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Payal Dhar’s YA novel with a queer theme runs the risk of over-simplifying the complexities #IndiaNEWS
Payal Dhar begins her Young Adults novel It Has No Name with a story of harassment. An old man, seemingly harmless, mutters horrific adjectives when the protagonist of the story, Sami comes near him. From here we see the world of Sami – a young girl uncomfortable with her body and her femininity. The story will possibly resonate with most women who have gone through the phase in school where everything pink was met with a hateful gaze, as though the cause of all societal oppression lay in the colour of their shirt. Or when mothers forced young girls into tight lehengas and saris for weddings and festivals where the terrifying feeling of being paraded around as a prized goat ran deep and was eventually internalised as the fault of the “outer appearance�. However, Sami’s discomfiture is deeply ingrained – she is not merely upset about being forced into femininity, she does not wish to be accepted as feminine.The premiseDhar brings out the subtle nuances of a larger discourse in the understanding of gender through the character of Sami. She is a “tomboy�, an old-fashioned term used for girls who act like boys – and therein lies the underlying tension of the book itself. How is...Read more

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