“A girl. A machine.

A freak”: A Consideration of
Contemporary Queer Composites

Jennifer Mitchell

Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature, Volume 52, Number

1, January 2014, pp. 51-62 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/bkb.2014.0033

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/539434

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]
 Contemporary Queer Composites
freak”: A Consideration of
by Jennifer Mitchell “A girl. A machine. A
Approaching queerness as intrinsically tied to
the rejection of notions of the self as fixed, stable,
and monolithic, I argue that contemporary young
adult literature that incorporates inter-species
romances is a site of new queer possibilities. I
read Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and the first two Jennifer Mitchell is a Visiting Assistant
Professor of English at Weber State
novels in Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and University, having earned her doctorate in
English Literature at the City University of
Bone series as broadening current metaphors for New York-Graduate Center. In addition to
teaching in these fields, she has published
queerness. articles on adolescent fiction, sexuality and
queer theory, and modernist literature.

© 2014 by Bookbird, Inc.

“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

T
ogether David L. Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban
Muñoz ask, “What’s Queer about Queer Studies?” in their
introduction to the 2005 double issue of Social Text dedicated to
the subject, and promptly answer, “A lot” (3). After a brief chronicle of
the early days of queer theory and the recuperation of the term “queer,”
Eng, Halberstam, and Muñoz implicitly respond to somewhat bleak
murmurs about the end of queerness, the twilight of the queer moment,
and the hypothetical allure of arriving at some postqueer space, so to
speak; as such, they locate the future of queer studies as focused on
“global crises…geopolitics of war and terror, and national manifesta-
tions of sexual, racial, and gendered hierarchies” (1). Despite the keen
insights that fill the pages of Social Text that follow, this foundational
concern about the future of queer theory has not dissipated.
Approximately seven years later, in “Queer and Then?”, Michael
Warner addresses this presumed end of queer theory in an editorial for
The Chronicle of Higher Education. Citing the conclusion of Duke Univer-
sity Press’s Series Q and its long lineage of queer publications as the
catalyst for the consideration of queerness that follows, Warner writes:
“queer theory now has the shape of a searching and still largely undi-
gested conversation, rich enough to have many branches, some different
enough to be incommensurate with one another.”1 Warner continues
this account of the offshoots of the early, formative days of queer theory
by posing the following parenthetical questions: “Does the embrace of
queerness entail a romantic opposition to all normativity whatsoever? Is
there something inherently antisocial in the experience of sexuality?”
While Warner does not provide answers to such questions, he posits
that, because the movements that stemmed from queer theory often
sought to distance themselves from those origins, “queer theory has
often seemed, from its very inception, to be else-
…Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and where.” Unwilling to relinquish queer theory, its
Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke relevance, and its possible futures, Warner credits
the activist and academic movements associated
and Bone series… despite having with it for keeping alive “a political imagination
a seemingly heteronormative of sexuality.”
It is difficult, perhaps, to consider contem-
framework, are ripe with the kind porary children’s and adolescent literature as
of queer epistemology that suggests possessing, perpetuating, and reconfiguring this
that there is still, in fact, much type of politicized imagining of sex. Yet, the
claims that I make in the argument that follows
more underneath the umbrella of are based heavily on the future of queer theory
queer studies with which to engage. imagined by Eng, Halberstam, and Muñoz:
“Queer epistemology insists that we embark on
expanded investigations of normalization and intersectionality” (5). I
point to two different representations of queerness that expand such
investigations in Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and Laini Taylor’s Daughter
of Smoke and Bone series—both fairly contemporary young adult novels
that, despite having a seemingly heteronormative framework, are ripe
with the kind of queer epistemology that suggests that there is still, in
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

fact, much more underneath the umbrella of queer studies with which
to engage.
In their introduction to Over the Rainbow: Queer Children’s and Young
Adult Literature, Michelle Ann Abate and Kenneth Kidd chronicle the
etymology of the term “queer,” focusing primarily on its already expan-
sive possibilities: “The word ‘queer,’ which first emerged in English in the
sixteenth century, has long meant ‘strange,’ ‘unusual,’ and ‘out of align-
ment,’ even as it has been linked to non-heteronormative sexuality since
around the turn of the twentieth-century” (3). Situating queerness as
distinctly oppositional to normativity—the insinuation within Michael
Warner’s parenthetical rhetorical questions—allows for an inclusive,
expansive approach to queerness in and through children’s literature.
Abate and Kidd identify a far more theoretically-driven, specific desig-
nation: “The term [queer] at once fortifies and dismantles the notion of a
stable or knowable self, in relation to gender and sexuality especially but
not exclusively” (4). Following in the logical footsteps of Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick’s resistance to “the deadening pretended knowingness” that
defines our notions of gender and sexual identities (Epistemology 12),
Abate and Kidd shy away from any notion of fixity that closes off lived
and theoretical possibilities.
For the purposes of this paper, I argue that Marissa Meyer’s Cinder
and Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series can be read as
queer in ways that, because of their sustained resistance to fixity,
usefully expand previous conversations about metaphors for queerness.
Indeed, the questions of selfhood and species identification raised in
each novel—both in terms of cross-species desire and, more importantly
to a certain extent, in terms of the species ambiguity ascribed to both
heroines—are tied to queer theory’s claims about stable identity and the
impossibility of the “knowable self ” (Abate and Kidd 4). Both Meyer’s
Cinder and Taylor’s Karou are of abstruse origins; their own species
designations are virtually unrecognizable as they consistently straddle
at least two often seemingly impossible identities throughout the novels,
presenting alternative representations of what Sedgwick advocates as,
“the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses
and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s
gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify
monolithically” (Tendencies 8).
Rejecting any notion of monolithic signification, both Cinder and
Karou find themselves swept up in the mystery that surrounds them,
their origins, and their futures. Cinder and Karou spend much of the
novels intentionally and accidentally discovering aspects of their char-
acters and their histories that defy any solid notion of self. That extends,
of course, to their inter-special romantic pursuits, as Cinder’s impossible
attraction to Prince Kai and Karou’s unspeakable attachment to Akiva
actively confuse the heroines and their supporting cast. The presenta-
tion of such romances as potentially threatening to the individual, to
the family, and, remarkably, to the state is a testament to the argument
put forth by Steven Bruhm and Natasha Hurley: “nowhere is this panic
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

[about children’s sexuality] more explosive than To Know or Not to Know: Cinder’s Selves
in the field of the queer child, the child whose Within the narrative confines of both novels is
play confirms neither the comfortable stories of an invitation to focus on a primary issue in recent
child (a)sexuality nor the supposedly blissful queer scholarship, the question of passing. Kenji
promises of adult heteronormativity” (ix). The Yoshino defines covering, the broader umbrella
latter half of this claim is crucial to under- term under which passing is subsumed, as “to tone
standing the ways in which Meyer’s and Taylor’s down a disfavored identity to fit into the main-
novels are engaged with issues of queerness; such stream” (ix). Yoshino later uses the phrases “other
blissful promises of a hetero future, masked by closets” and “secret selves” as ways of considering
superficial heteronormative traits ascribed to lineages of queer experience (72-3). Whether
each dynamic—Cinder and Karou are feminized Cinder and Karou can pass in their worlds—in
while the objects of their affections are mascu- other words, whether they can be read and recog-
linized—are challenged throughout the entirety nized as “normal” human girls—is a formative
of the narratives. Further, because the represen- concern in both texts. Karou’s “natural” blue
tations of romance are publically dismissed or hair, ambiguously tattooed hands, and alterna-
condemned, with participating parties shamed tive family, and Cinder’s combination of human
or punished—thereby highlighting Bruhm corporeality, scientific machinations, and alien
and Hurley’s conception of “panic”—they are blood line all speak to ways in which the two
distinctly queer in scope. heroines struggle with how they are perceived
Rather than thinking about queer as only a and understood—with whether they can pass as
signifier for LGBT sexualities, I choose a more something other than what they are, something
expansive (ultimately, queerer) and inclusive more seamless in its presentation.
understanding of queerness. As Abate and Kidd Interestingly, this struggle, especially for
articulate, “Understanding children’s literature Cinder, is tied in explicit and implicit ways to
as queer rather than more narrowly as lesbian/ Donna Haraway’s conceptual cyborg, as chron-
gay broadens the interpretive possibilities” (4). icled in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. Haraway
Cinder and the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series writes, “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a
are ripe with such vast interpretive possibilities, hybrid of machine and organism, a creature
which ultimately encourage a broadening of the of social reality as well as a creature of fiction”
designation of “queer” to extend fragmented, (149). Cinder, referred to as a cyborg within the
composite selves as well as cross-species self- narrative, is first introduced while she is plot-
hoods and sexualized desires. As such, I embrace, ting the acquisition of a new, better-fitting foot.
a consideration of queerness that overtly pushes Demeaned as a “thing” and constantly mocked for
the boundaries of Sedgwick’s foundational queer her perceived lack of humanity by her stepmother,
project and that seeks to continue presenting Cinder is concerned with her ability to pass as
new, possible responses to the crucial “What’s fully human, when in fact she is only partially
Queer about Queer Studies Now” question. human (27). In response to Cinder’s claim that
Finally, the heroines of both novels, Cinder and she loves her dying sister, her stepmother hurt-
Karou, can and should be read as queer. Such a fully cries, “Don’t insult me . . . Do your kind even
reading acknowledges the importance of non- know what love is? Can you feel anything at all, or
normative narratives in terms of their bodies, is it just . . . programmed?” (63). Although Cinder
selves, romances, and, ultimately, activisms. considers her own emotions to be substantial and
meaningful, she is consistently dehumanized as
Within the narrative confines of the family scapegoat. Granted, much of Cinder’s
both novels is an invitation to focus concerns throughout the novel may echo the
on a primary issue in recent queer typical teenage angst about not belonging, but
the specificity with which that angst is tied to
scholarship, the question of passing. Cinder’s bodily make-up invites queerer analyses.
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

The humanity of Cinder’s family is virtu- identity; as Susan Stryker articulates, “Gender’s
ally contingent upon their constant disavowal of absence renders sexuality largely incoherent, yet
Cinder as not human. As Judith Butler articu- gender refuses to be the stable foundation on
lates in Undoing Gender, “For the human to be which a system of sexuality can be theorized”
human, it must relate to what is nonhuman, to (“Transgender” 212). Part of Cinder’s inability to
what is outside itself but continuous with itself recognize the interest of Prince Kai centers on
by virtue of an interimplication in life. This rela- what she perceives as the outward invisibility of
tion to what is not itself constitutes the human her gender.
being in its livingness, so that the human exceeds Stylistically, the short, amputated fragments
its boundary in the very effort to establish them” that litter the text when Cinder is at her most
(12). Cinder’s stepmother and stepsister use their unsettled, highlight the brutality of her disori-
constant highlighting of Cinder’s inhumanity entation: “A girl. A machine. A freak” and “Of
to magnify their own humanness. Instead of a girl. A girl full of wires” (26, 82). The severed
questioning the validity of her emotions but still dynamic of these narrative moments indicates
influenced by her family’s primarily antagonistic Cinder’s inability to conceive of herself holisti-
response to her, Cinder obsesses over the physical cally. Scientists and surgeons, then, are those
manifestations of her complicated humanity— credited with the cultivation of the identity of the
her hybrid position. When she, like other incar- girl who is “36.28 percent not human,” an “exem-
nations of Cinderella before her, contemplates a plary model of modern science” (82). Rather than
new gown for the ball, more pressing and specific an intrinsic conception of selfhood, Cinder’s
concerns for skin grafts that would hide “her identity comes from what others have put onto
cyborg parts” surface instead (31). and into her body, once again destabilizing any
Cinder’s disjointed body is a constant reminder notion of fixed coherence.
of her unknowable incompleteness; indeed, she Highlighting the inorganic nature of the
looks down at the ill-fitting mechanical foot that change to Cinder’s body, this focus on the
has been forced onto her ankles without having a surgeons and scientists as the harbingers of
concrete understanding of the process by which change draws a connection between Cinder’s
it was acquired, the implications of its existence, development and other body transformations.
and the connection between its placement and Unlike what Nikki Sullivan identifies as “modifi-
her sense of self. By bridging Haraway’s under- catory practices such as tattooing, branding,
standing of the cyborg with theories of trans piercing” (552), the changes to Cinder’s form are
identity, readers can approach Cinder’s evolu- made, presumably, without her desire, knowl-
tion into a cyborg, which is treated as an inva- edge, and consent. Cinder explains her memory
sive, though necessary, alteration to her body, of this development: “At least, that’s what they
as tied substantially to her awareness of visible told me. Like I said, I don’t remember any of it”
gender identity. When thinking about how her (101). The narrator follows up with, “She only
younger sister had “already developed curves” barely remembered the drug-induced fog, her
that Cinder “couldn’t begin to hope for” (34), the mushy thoughts. And then there was the pain.
narrator laments: “If Cinder’s body had ever been Every muscle burning. Every joint screaming.
pre-disposed to femininity, it had been ruined by Her body in rebellion as it discovered what had
whatever the surgeons had done to her, leaving been done to it” (101). Because Cinder lacks any
her with a stick-straight figure. Too angular. Too agency in what happens to her body, the violence
boyish. Too awkward with her heavy artificial ascribed to her process, though identifiable in
leg” (34). While Cinder considers herself and is Susan Stryker’s understanding of the transsexual
often read by others as a girl, there is much to body as “flesh torn apart and sewn together
be said for the absence of physical, recognizable again” (“My Words” 240), is distinct, at least
markers of femininity, which contributes directly on the surface. As a result, thinking about the
to the ambiguity surrounding Cinder’s sexual process by which Cinder transitions presumably
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

from human to cyborg as indicative of a trans mythology that is self-

aware, if not self-reflexive, is initially problematic.2
However, Haraway’s cyborg, “a condensed image of both imagina-
tion and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possi-
bility of historical transformation” (150), challenges accepted categorical
norms in ways parallel to trans theory and experience. As “oppositional”
and “utopian,” Haraway further explains6, “the cyborg skips the step of
original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense” (151).
Haraway uses the cyborg to re-imagine struggles of difference specific to
gender and sex. Cinder’s cyborg-ness, though, is a testament to the ways
in which she is alienated from virtually all possible sources of origins
and community. It is also a vital aspect of what Cinder perceives as her
lack of sexual desirability. When Cinder admits that she is attracted to
Prince Kai, she is frantic about the possibility that he will recognize her
cyborg parts; after a slight fainting spell, Cinder is terrified at the pros-
pect of Kai’s ability to know the machine part of her: “Fear clamped her
gut. Was her retina display showing?” (231). Cinder can only imagine
herself as a desired party if she can pass seamlessly as human. Toward
the end of the book, Cinder finally comes to terms with the seemingly
disparate aspects of her being, though her acceptance is still fraught
with blame: “It was not her fault he had liked her. It was not her fault
she was cyborg. She would not apologize” (338). At this moment, she
looks forward to Kai possibly recognizing her simultaneously as cyborg
and as a “normal girl” (348).
Despite Cinder’s acknowledgment that another might, in fact, read
her as a “normal girl,” there is an inherent queerness in the sparks
that fly between Cinder and Prince Kai. Whether he is fully able to
acknowledge it or not, Kai is attracted to Cinder as cyborg, as trans, as
not-normal-girl. Indeed, it is not the revelation that Cinder is a cyborg
that threatens his attachment, but rather the revelation that she is Lunar,
a more menacing alien species within the novel. The ultimate betrayal—
the moment of Kai’s rejection—is tied, not to Cinder’s mechanical parts,
but to her Lunar origins. Cinder’s humanity is undercut less by her
mechanical parts—the most overt representation
Ultimately, it is her status as of her hybridity—than by her blood, an ines-
conglomerate, as part-human, capable affirmation of her origins, but still just
part-alien, part-machine—as another link in the seemingly endless chain of
misplaced signifiers of Cinder’s identity. Notably,
fundamentally queer composite— Kai’s final words to Cinder are tied directly to
that makes Cinder who and what recognition and appearance: “You’re even more
painful to look at…” (368). Of course, what Kai
she is: an icon of hope for the sees suddenly, what prevents him from reading
disenfranchised groups with which Cinder as he has throughout the novel—Cinder’s
she identifies and belongs. problematic blood origins—is not actually visible
on the surface. The paradox here, is that elements
of Cinder’s “natural” body, that which could not be altered through
surgery, is what ultimately grounds her beloved’s misrecognition and
subsequent rejection of her. Prince Kai’s romantic failure—which,
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

perhaps will be rectified as the series progresses—emphasizes the

“truth” of Cinder’s trans body; his fear of the part of Cinder that she
never understood, identified with, or embraced further emphasizes the
potential trans nature of Cinder’s experience. Ultimately,
it is her status as conglomerate, as part-human, part-alien,
part-machine—as fundamentally queer composite—that
makes Cinder who and what she is: an icon of hope for
the disenfranchised groups with which she identifies
and belongs. Cinder’s amalgamated trans status provides
these contingents—Lunar, cyborg, servant—which are
splintered and framed as often oppositional, with the
potential for collective mobility.

The War of Forbidden Desire: Karou’s Queer

Lives
In many ways, the degrees of queerness in Cinder are
much more overt and identifiable than in Laini Taylor’s
books. Cinder’s explicit corporeal queerness, the public
shame of her being “outed,” and the seeming impossi-
bility of her sexual desires make up the bulk of the novel.
Readers are, it seems, invited to approach Cinder, in one
way or another, as potentially queer. In Taylor’s series,
however, the struggle for self and for desire is more subtly
complicated—and, perhaps, even more radical as a result.
Daughter of Smoke and Bones’ two romantic entangle-
ments—that of Karou and Akiva, human and angel; and
Madrigal and Akiva, chimaera and angel—are presented to readers as
simple impossibilities. Angels and chimaera are enemies; angels and
humans have no business interacting.3 Any other concep-
tion of these relationships is inconceivable, treasonous,
or blasphemous in kind. That Akiva is at the heart of
both romances suggests the presence of a prototypical
love triangle; however, that triangulation is made even
queerer by the revelation that Karou and Madrigal have
the same soul in different bodies at different times. Akiva
falls in love with Madrigal as chimaera, and then falls
in love with Karou as “human,” without realizing the
connection between the two objects of his desire. As
such, Taylor sets up the complex, and ultimately queer,
ground rules for Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of
Blood and Starlight.
Karou is, without question, complicated. From her
ability to enact her wishes to her teeth-procuring missions
for her guardian to her intricate hybrid family—including
Issa, “serpent from the waist down and woman from the
waist up”; Twiga, “giraffe-necked”; Yasri, “parrot-beaked
and human eyed” (Daughter 8)—Karou’s existence and experience defy
explanation. Of course, like Cinder, the mystery that surrounds Karou
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

makes up the bulk of the narrative. While certain “I saw a girl…a girl with black eyes and gemstone
causal details are available to address small idio- hair, and…sadness. She had a sadness that was so
syncrasies, including the wishes that Karou uses deep, but it still could turn to light in a second,
to permanently acquire her signature blue hair, and when I saw her smile I wondered what it
bigger questions surface at every turn. In the would be like to make her smile. I thought…I
middle of the novel, when Karou finally lets thought it would be like the discovery of smiling”
herself talk to the monstrously beautiful angel (Daughter 210). Though Akiva and Karou are
Akiva, she thinks to herself “Stupid, stupid, what theoretical enemies—he an angel, and she tied
are you doing? Answers, she told herself. I’m getting to chimaera—this story indicates the root of his
attraction: a sad, deep human girl. That straight-
This search for answers enables forward identification is subverted when, shortly
thereafter, Akiva declares, “Karou, I know who
Karou to seek out the disparate, you are” (Daughter 250). Akiva recognizes Karou
almost paradoxical aspects of who in ways that transcend Karou’s self-awareness.
Whereas Cinder’s constant concern with the
she is without ever adhering to a implications of Kai actually seeing her leads her
neat, intrinsic notion of selfhood, to disavow and hide certain potentially disori-
sexuality, and purpose. enting aspects of her self, Akiva’s ability and
desire to see those disorienting aspects of Karou
answers” (Daughter 202). This search for answers encourages her to embrace those fundamentally
enables Karou to seek out the disparate, almost incommensurate elements.
paradoxical aspects of who she is without ever The explanation of Akiva’s leading claim is
adhering to a neat, intrinsic notion of selfhood, contingent upon the breaking of the wishbone
sexuality, and purpose. that Karou possesses, a gift from Brimstone, her
In their earliest substantial conversation in the guardian. The newly broken wishbone reveals
novel, Akiva asks, “But where did you come from? Akiva’s memory of, “waiting to die” after a battle
Who are you, really?” and Karou responds with, between angels and chimaera, when he first sees
“Why does everybody ask me that?” (Daughter Madrigal, a chimaera with “lean human thighs
206). Karou’s immediate, familiar disdain for that gave way, below the knee, to the sleep taper
the question is further explained: “Karou asked, of a gazelle’s legs,” with “fine cloven hooves” and
animated by a flash of anger, though it was some- folded “wings” (Daughter 269). Akiva admits,
thing she had wondered herself almost every “Unaccountably, she was beautiful” (Daughter
day since she was old enough to understand the 269). The strangeness of Akiva’s attraction to
extreme oddness of her circumstances” (Daughter Karou is overshadowed by the impossibility of
206). Like Cinder, Karou struggles with the lack Akiva’s attraction to Madrigal. In addition to
of coherence she feels when considering her iden- the taboo against enemies, a greater taboo tied
tity. Karou’s circumstances are, in fact, odd, as to bestiality surfaces. Such insinuations are
she often fictionalizes the aspects of her life that quickly overshadowed by the humanity ascribed
cannot be adequately explained; as a result, her to Madrigal, both physically and personally. In a
sketchbook is filled with portraits of the “imag- temporarily idyllic space, in which “they cupped
ined” creatures that make up Karou’s home life— their wings around their happiness and called it
they are simultaneously real and made-up. Indeed, a world,” Akiva and Madrigal fall in love, despite
these irreconcilable differences, made manifest in the treachery inherent in their romance (Daughter
the simple but evasive response to Akiva’s ques- 387). Although Akiva and Madrigal use their
tion, “I’m me. Who are you?” are telling (Daughter affair to dream up a “different sort of life” both for
206). Without substantive details to justify her themselves and their “people,” the punishment,
identity, Karou is at a loss and listens attentively once they are caught, is Akiva’s front row seat
to Akiva describe his initial fascination with her: to Madrigal’s public execution (Daughter 368).
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Such torture accounts for Akiva’s subsequent reconciliation is made possible, once again, but
familiarity with pain and misery, as the loss of only with an acceptance of identity not simply
Madrigal is palpable for Akiva and readers alike. as whole and inherent but as conglomerate and
Yet, as the build-up of memories gives way to the queerly fashioned.
moment in which Akiva and Karou have broken
the wishbone, it becomes clear that Karou and
Madrigal are the same—sort of. Brimstone, as
magical resurrectionist, re-creates Madrigal’s
soul into a new body that he builds. That body
ultimately becomes Karou: “She was Karou, and
she was Madrigal. She was human and chimaera.
… Within her, something was at work: a swift
concrescence of memories, two consciousnesses
that were really one, coming together like inter-
lacing fingers” (Daughter 390).
While Cinder’s queerness is tied to the ways
in which she straddles two identity categories,
in this moment, Karou is two disparate beings;
the violence with which Madrigal is executed is
paralleled distinctly by the violence with which
Karou is constructed. Earlier, Akiva explained
that the price for wishes, or more accurately, the
price for making bodies is pain: “To take from the
universe, you must give. . . If it were something
easy to give, it would be meaningless” (Daughter
222). The queerness inherent in Karou’s circum-
stances, again, somewhat parallel to the violence
ascribed to the trans process, reveals itself in
Karou’s insecurities. When Akiva is reluctant to The End, or, More Aptly, the Ender
kiss her back, she asks, “Is it…is it because I’m not To situate the implications of queerness in
pure? Because I’m a…a made thing?” (Daughter both novels, I would like to take a look back at
414). Highlighting the tension between Madri- an earlier literary flirtation with interspecies
gal’s organic existence and her deliberately built queerness. Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, the titular
body, Karou cannot reconcile the two identities character of Orson Scott Card’s science fiction
she suddenly owns and the bodies that carried adventure, Ender’s Game, evolves from a child
and carry them. She embodies the memories and prodigy into an ideal commander at the hands
experiences of Madrigal, but she has lived the of manipulative adults in power throughout the
past seventeen years as Karou; importantly, it is novel. Yet, during this trajectory, and despite the
the inorganic “made” identity that rings true to allocation of sexualized characteristics to other
Karou. As a result, even when she admits “She players in the novel, Ender’s sexuality mani-
was Madrigal of the Kirin,” she is still Karou fests itself in a notably distinct way. As Ender’s
in the text, to her friends, to Akiva (Days 53). Game winds to its somewhat bleak conclusion,
Karou chooses the body that was constructed, Ender explains his newly acknowledged intimacy
not birthed, the identity that was crafted, not with the enemy that he has so skillfully, albeit
intrinsic. Even when she is technically able to unknowingly, annihilated: “I know the buggers
resurrect for herself a body more chimaera in better than any other living soul, and maybe if I
appearance, Karou chooses the Brimstone-made go there I can understand them better” (219). The
human incarnation (Days 111). The impossible intimacy with which Ender knows the buggers
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

and they, in return, know him, establishes Ender as tied more explic-
itly to the buggers than to his “fellow” humans on earth. In the novel’s
final scenes, Ender discovers the bugger queen in her cocoon, imagines
himself helping her repopulate the bugger world, and, theoretically,
weds himself to the queen: “I’ll carry you…I’ll go from world to world
until I find a time and a place where you can come awake in safety”
(224). Conjuring up a series of images that involve a kiss between a
bugger and a human, Ender ends the novel searching for a space wherein
the buggers, and he himself as their new carrier, can “thrive” (226).
While subsequent books in the series chronicle Ender’s eventual
“traditional” marriage, Ender’s Game frames an inter-species dynamic
that is full of queer potential. Ender’s sexuality—removed completely
from the confines of Battle School—begins to surface only when he feels
the intimate pull of the bugger queen. Because Ender’s desire is tied to
the bugger’s preemptive recognition of him, his orientation—in virtually
every sense of the word—shifts from human to alien. Ender’s concern for
the public’s acceptance of the buggers and his intense, intimate connec-
tion with the buggers themselves reflects an obvious fear of communal
censure that mirrors the coming out process.4 As Sara Ahmed articu-
lates, “To become straight means not only that we have to turn toward
the objects given to us by heterosexual culture but also that we must turn
away from objects that take us off this line. The queer subject within
straight culture hence deviates and is made socially present as deviant”
(554). Ender fails to “become straight” within the confines of Ender’s
Game; instead, he turns not toward an object deemed appropriate by
heterosexual culture, but to an object deemed previously unthinkable.
Ender’s queerness manifests itself both in his desire for the bugger queen
and his inability to “orient himself toward women as loved objects”
(Ahmed 557). Although the novel’s attention to Ender’s potentially
romantic engagement with the buggers and the
…they set the stage for subsequent actual attention paid to the buggers as a species
worthy of investigation and pursuit are fleeting,
explorations of inter-special they set the stage for subsequent explorations of
romance, a subject which has inter-special romance, a subject which has infil-
trated the field of contemporary young adult
infiltrated the field of contemporary literature and allowed for an expansive approach
young adult literature and allowed to queerness within the genre.
for an expansive approach to gender When Susan Stryker suggested that trans-
studies “has the potential to address
queerness within the genre. emerging problems in the critical study of gender
and sexuality, identity, embodiment, and desire”
in new and unprecedented ways, she might not have predicted the way
in which I would incorporate it here (“Transgender” 214). But, both
Cinder and the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series allow for a “radical
restructuring” of notions of identity, sexuality, bodies, and desire that
broaden the scope of queerness. Indeed, Cinder and Karou embrace the
“open mesh of possibilities, gaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and
excesses of meaning” that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick deems an integral part
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“A girl. A machine. A freak”: A Consideration of Contemporary Queer Composites

of queerness (8). The literal open network of the girls’ bodies; the fissures
in their identities; the disconnect between their understanding of who
they are and the way in which they are perceived; the echoes of their past
selves that are seemingly irreconcilable; the breaks in and multifaceted
layers of their experiences, all encourage Cinder and Karou, and their
struggles sexualities, to be read as boundary-blurring, as radical, as queer.
Ultimately, this push toward an acknowledgment of new queerness has
the potential to broaden the scope of our current and future conversa-
tions about queer characters, texts, and movements.

Notes
1. Even in this particular argument, much of what I claim could possibly
be read not only in terms of queer theory, but also in terms of race
theory and ethnicity studies.
2. It is difficult to discuss Cinder’s transition from human to cyborg
precisely because, in the climactic moment of the novel, Cinder is
revealed as Lunar—a literal alien rather than as human.
3. Allegorically, this series vaguely parallels the conflict in the Middle
East. When Karou asks Akiva why he and his fellow angels consider
the chimaera—Karou’s surrogate family—to be their enemies, he
explains, “We have always been” (Daughter 205). The Hebrew and
Arabic origins of character and place names, the ambiguous violence
ascribed to all parties, and the seemingly eternal history of the war
allows the text to be read in these rather specific allegorical terms.
The perhaps problematic identification of villains and heroes within
each warring faction further bolsters this reading.
4. For a specific reading of the buggers as queer, see Joseph Campbell’s
“Kill the Bugger: Ender’s Game and the Question of Heteronorma-
tivity,” cited below.

Works Cited

Children’s Literature
Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. New York: Tom Doherty, 1991.
Print.
Meyer, Marissa. Cinder. New York: Macmillan, 2012. Print.
Taylor, Laini. Daughter of Smoke and Bone. New York: Little, Brown,
2011. Print.
—. Days of Blood and Starlight. New York: Little, Brown, 2012. Print.

Secondary Sources
Abate, Michelle Ann and Kenneth Kidd. Eds. Over the Rainbow: Queer
Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P,
2009. Print.
Ahmed, Sara. “Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology.” GLQ: A
Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12.4 (2006): 543-74. Print.
Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

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“A GIRL. A MAcHIne. A FReAk”: A cOnSIdeRATIOn OF cOnTeMPORARY QUeeR cOMPOSITeS

Bruhm, Steven and natasha Hurley, eds. Sedgwick, eve kosofsky. Epistemology of the
Curiouser: On the Queerness of Children. Closet. Berkeley: U of california P, 1990. Print.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2004. Print. —. Tendencies. durham: duke UP, 1993. Print.
campbell, Joseph. “kill the Bugger: Ender’s Game Stryker, Susan. “My Words to Victor Franken-
and the Question of Heteronormativity.” stein Above the Village of chamounix: Trans-
Science Fiction Studies 36.3 (2009): 490-507. gender Rage.” GLQ 1 (1994): 237-54. Print.
Print. —. “Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s evil
eng, david L. with Judith Halberstam and José Twin.” GLQ 10.2 (2004): 212-15. Print.
esteban Muñoz. “What’s Queer about Queer Warner, Michael. “Queer and Then?” The Chron-
Studies now?” Social Text 84-85 (2005): 1-17. icle of Higher Education. 1 January 2012. Print.
Print. Yoshino, kenji. Covering: The Hidden Assault on
Haraway, donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: Our Civil Rights. new York: Random House,
The Reinvention of Nature. new York: Rout- 2006. Print.
ledge, 1991. Print.

As an adaptation of a Japane
se film intended primarily for
Nobody Knows by Shelley Tan adults,
the North r o n t
aka is an unusual addition to
American children’s book lan
dscape. Stills from Dare mo shi
directed by noted filmmaker and ranai (20
documentarian Hirokazu Koreed 04),
o
to

grace the cover and some of a,

compelling novella for tween
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a
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-year-old Akira, Tanaka’s prose
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Tanaka’s emotionally powerfu ngth of Nobody Knows
l story lies in the absence of mo
whether on the part of the nar ralizing, Toronto; Groundwood
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Young readers will be challen sur
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Melek Ortabasi

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