Subversion of Heterosexual Normativity in Armistead Maupin’s Michael Tolliver Lives

Abstract

Armistead Maupin in the novel Michael Tolliver Lives demonstrates his bold acceptance and victory of the queer life through the protagonist Michael Tolliver. Maupin’s dealings with the issues of queer sexuality in the novel subverts and deconstructs the binary oppositions between compulsory heterosexuality and homosexuality and presents that such norms of binary divisions are ideologically and historically conditioned. By presenting the major characters who celebrate homosexuality by performing outside the traditional divisions of sexualities of homosexuality and heterosexuality, the novelist demonstrates the subversion of heterosexual normativity in the novel.