1. FUNNY BOY(3): QUEERING HOME & SCHOOL
Riot Journal
The Best School of ALL
Shyam Selvadurai
Bluence: chap 3 &４　
　what is gained and lost in Arjie’s growth?
Arjie from homosociality to homosexuality (e.g. his attention to Uncle Daryl’s facial feature  attention to Jegan’s features)
Male faces and bodies (also Black Tie’s)
-- Homosocial between Jegan and Arjie // his father and his friend
-- closeted?
-- homophobia as a result of homosociality?
-- disciplinary training of Arjie as a real man
-- Arjie needs to distinguish between violence in sexual act and sexual/physical violence
-- race, ethnicity and racialization
-- Where do we see the racial divide; race as politicized, just as love relation is politicized (politicized as it reflects hierarchy)
Definition of race – varies as the concept of diaspora does

2. Outline
Introduction: School & Home as Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)
Discussion Questions
The Best School of All
Riot Journal
May: migration & growth
Riot Journal: living with neighbor and friends, but not relatives
Arjie’s development: anger & disgust to disagreement and rebellion
Parallels 1) British Council scene; 2) Diggy’s masculinist intervention
Garage as a masculine space?  car and street
-- explained his gradual awareness of racial riot (escape plans); racial differences revealed in the vote records;
-- house: defamiliarization (despite sounds of normalcy: plates and spoons) sense of familiarity (being awakened; drinking tea)
Don’t sense it? Or holding on to the familiar?  record albums
Arjie’s racial identity: no difference (first in a religious school; a Tamil in a Sinhalese class); see racial tension in cricket games, in the hotel, at Victoria Academy; disagrees with both sides; realization of his difference from Shehan
-- gaps in narration: house burned; grandma killed; before getting the passport

3. Two Critical Views HOME:
“Queering the politics of the family and the nation, Selvadurai suggests an aesthetic in which transgression, disorientation, the uncanny become alternative strategies of living and inhabiting spaces and identities”(Jayawickrama 134).
Childhood & Nostalgia:
“In analyzing the strained child-adult relations in Funny Boy, I delineate the ways in which childhood has traditionally been constructed as both an instrument for change and a space for personal and collective return to a gentler past, and I explore how the past to which one returns is emptied and re-inscribed with new meaning in Arjie’s shifting postcolonial environment” (Bell 257).

4. Key Words Childhood Growth Society Home & Games Marginalization
The Unhomely
Growth
Marginalization
Transgression
Childhood
Home & Games
-- Education as un-learning
-- Untying the family ties

5. Introduction: Home & the Unhomely
Familial Houses Burned
Public spaces: theatre & country bungalow
hotel (burned)
Games & Performances:
Bride-Bride & Cricket
grandparents burned in the car on a Street
Victoria Academy  “masculinity” at school & home
Poetry recitation
scrabble
Bildung
3) authorities: Grandma, Husband, A.S.P., hotel owner/government, lawyer, Sinhala as a sign of power

6. Introduction: Colonial Intertexts
The Best School of All (by Sir Henry Newbolt)
Vitae Lampada
It's good to see the School we knew, The land of youth and dream, To greet again the rule we knew Before we took the stream: Though long we've missed the sight of her, Our hearts may not forget; We've lost the old delight of her, We keep her honour yet. ,,,
… The river of death has brimmed his banks, And England's far, and Honour a name, But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks, "Play up! play up! and play the game!"
The King & I, Little Women

7. Introduction: Queering the language
Politics & Language:
Arjie transferred to Victoria Academy and placed in a Sinhalese class, as the father’s attempts at normalizing him
Arjie and Shehan’s reading of Newbolt’s poems at the British council
Arjie’s mixing of the two poems at the beginning of his practice, and at the end.

8. Characters in Conflicts
Black Tie (Abeysinghe)
(a closer look at him 216)
Head prefect
Personal prefect (Angel of Death)
Lokubandara
Colonial education & physical punishment
Education for all religions and races
Buddhist school (215)
Tamil
Sinhalese Class
Cheliah (213)
Salgado

9. Discussion Questions “The Best School of All”
1) Authority: How are images of authority presented?
2) Fragmentation: How is the school divided into two camps, while having its hierarchy maintained?
3) Transgression: How does Arjie get attracted to Shehan? What roles do family members (father, mother, Diggy, Sonali) play? Why is he disgusted by the first sexual act? How is his sexual initiation connected with politics on the one hand, and games on the other?
“Riot Journal”
Fragmentation: What does the fragmentary nature of this writing convey Arjie’s feelings?
Loss: Why is he not able to feel anything about the loss of his burned house until the very end? (291; 292)
Mob, Neighbors and Lovers: What roles do neighbors play? What do you think about the last encounter between Arjie and Shehan?

10. Education of Masculinity
be like a man: not to tell parents
taller and larger than Arjie, with “loud confidence”
play rugger with brutality
playing crickets by cheating, fawning on the judges, or with violence (227)

11. References
Bell, Katherine. "Breaking the narrative ties that bind in Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy." ESC 38.3– 4 (September/December 2012): 255–75.
Jayawickrama, Sharanya. "At Home in the Nation? Negotiating Identity in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature-2005-Jayawickrama- Vol 40.2(2005): 123–39.

12. Next Week Your paper project Compare & Contrast One of the following:
Cartographies of Diaspora Chap 8
Butler, Gender Performance