Masculine Female and Feminine Male: A Study of Gender Slippage Amid Migration Spaces in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

Abstract

Reviewing gender as a doing reveals how gender idiosyncrasy is framed and formed. The present study tackles gender as a discursively constructed category in Mohsin Hamid’s novel, Exit West (2017). Employing theoretical ideas from Butler’s Gender Trouble (1999) and Bodies That Matter (2003), this qualitative descriptive study analyzes the performative nature of gender. It exposes the constraints which the normative matrix of binaries inflicts on sex, gender, and desire of Muslim migrant and refugee characters living in non-Muslim spaces. Moreover, the paper investigates the role of religion, ethnicity, and cross-national gender differences in instilling dominant gender discourses in the minds of the migrants. The findings of this study reveal that the characters produce alternative discourses of agency, transformation and voluntarism against hegemonic gender norms while relying heavily on the processes of gender slippage and role reversal.