Year: 2026 | Month: September | Volume: 13 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 72-78
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20260909
From Plantation to Performativity: Queering Gender Labor, and Kinship in Natalie Baszile's Queen Sugar
Suparna Das1, Dr. Darsha Jani2
1Research Scholar, Department of English, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad
2Principal & Professor, Smt. S. R. Mehta Arts College, Navgujarat Campus, Ahmedabad
Corresponding Author: Suparna Das
ABSTRACT
Contemporary feminist criticism has significantly expanded the understanding of race, gender, and power in Natalie Baszile's Queen Sugar; however, its engagement with the novel has largely remained within the framework of binary gender identities. This paper examines Queen Sugar through a gender-queer perspective to argue that the novel not only critiques patriarchal structures but also destabilizes the very binaries through which gender is socially produced and understood. Drawing upon Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity alongside Kimberlé Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality, Black feminism, Marxist feminism, and ecofeminism, this paper reflects how labor, land, kinship, and community function as interconnected sites where race, gender, class, and ecology continuously reshape identity.
Through a critical reading of Charley Bordelon, Remy Broussard, and the Bordelon family's relationship with the plantation, the paper argues that the novel reconfigures authority, care, and belonging as relational practices rather than gender-specific attributes. Rather than presenting empowerment solely through women's access to traditionally masculine spaces, Queen Sugar imagines identities that exceed rigid distinctions between masculinity and femininity. By discussing how Queen Sugar engages with the notion of belonging, this paper argues that Baszile's novel belongs to postmodern feminist discourse in its willingness to destabilize binaries and envision gender and power relations in a different fluid light.
Keywords: Gender beyond the binary, Gender performativity, Queer theory, Postmodern feminism, Intersectionality, Natalie Baszile, Queen Sugar
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