Distorting overlaps: Identity as palimpsest in bitter in the mouth

Abstract

Monique Truong's novel Bitter in the Mouth (2010) palimpsestically constructs its protagonist and narrator with layered secrets (regarding synesthesia, rape, and race). This article analyzes the novel's palimpsestic structures and offers the palimpsest itself as a useful framework for analyzing the complexities of identity construction. As an interpretive tool, the palimpsest asks us to see distinction and interaction simultaneously: to see individual textual layers and their significance and also to see the blended patterns produced as the layers combine. A palimpsestic hermeneutic allows us to examine Truong's treatments of disability, sexual violence, and racial difference both individually and in their mutually constitutive functions. Individually, these portraits join contemporary calls to depathologize disability, to contextualize sexual violence, and to address the affective components of racialization. Combined, the novel's three secrets expose the racialization of vulnerability within sexual assault and the violence of double-consciousness. Significant beyond the workings of the novel itself, these palimpsestic portraits of race, gender, and (dis)ability redistribute the labor of racialization, placing the burdens and responsibilities of racial formations on the culturally dominant rather than the conventionally racialized subject. Additionally, the novel's palimpsestic style and structure train readers in palimpsestic thinking more broadly and offer the practice of such thinking as a basis for social engagement that allows both dominant and nondominant subjects to escape the interpellative traps of racist hegemony. © 2014 MELUS.