“Bury Your Head Between My Knees and Seek Pardon”: Gender, Sexuality, and National Conflict in John Okada’s No-No Boy

• Main Author: Thomas, Patricia A
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UNO 2012
• Subjects: gender; sexuality; masculinity; nisei; internment; resistance; American Literature; Asian American Studies; English Language and Literature; History of Gender
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1517; http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2538&context=td

In “‘Bury Your Head Between My Knees and Seek Pardon’: Gender, Sexuality, and National Conflict in John Okada’s 1957 novel, No-No Boy,” I analyze the ways in which the complexities of gendered sexuality expressed by protagonist Ichiro Yamada intersect with post-World War II and Internment-era national identifications for American nisei. I demonstrate that this apparent story of one man’s pursuit to resolve his conflict over national identity is, in reality, a tour de force of literary subversion that not only destabilizes the subterfuge that surrounded internment but also—in its deliberate failure to resolve questions of national conflict on the basis of masculine and heterosexual norms—encourages skepticism about the larger structures of order that allowed internment to happen.