Funny Boy
First Edition
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| Author | Shyam Selvadurai |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Sexuality, Diaspora, 1983 Colombo Riots |
| Genre | Historical Fiction, Gay pulp fiction |
| Publisher | McClelland & Stewart |
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Publication date
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1994 |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 328 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 412624251 |
Funny Boy is a coming-of-age novel by Canadian author Shyam Selvadurai. First published by McClelland and Stewart in September 1994, the novel won the Lambda Literary Award for gay male fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award.
Set in Sri Lanka where Selvadurai grew up, Funny Boy is constructed in the form of six poignant stories about a boy coming to age within a wealthy Tamil family in Colombo. Between the ages of seven and fourteen, he explores his sexual identity, and encounters the Sinhala-Tamil tensions leading up to the 1983 riots.
The novel presents vivid sketches of family members, friends, school teachers, shown co-operating, arguing, loving, and living. The large Tamil family, and its arguments and discussions reflect a specific culture, while in many aspects the problems are universal.
Tension mounts as the riots come closer to home, and the whole family sleeps in their shoes so they can quickly escape should the Sinhalese mobs descend.
When Selvadurai's Funny Boy was published in 1994, it was hailed as one of the most powerful renditions of the trauma of the prevailing ethnic tensions in contemporary Sri Lanka. Selvadurai brings together the struggles of sexuality, ethnicity and class. These issues arise during the development of the protagonist, Arjie, whose maturation is framed against the backdrop of ethnic politics.
In 2006, CBC radio presented a radio dramatization of the novel, directed by filmmaker Deepa Mehta.
Selvadurai has stated that Funny Boy should not be seen as an autobiography. While both he and Arjie are gay and Sri Lankans who immigrated to Canada, they had very different experiences.
The first part of the novel begins with the spend-the-days, in which the grandchildren congregate at Ammachi and Appachi’s home. Arjie and his female cousins, as usual, play their game of "bride-bride", which is interrupted when their cousin Tanuja (Her Fatness) refuses to indulge Arjie’s desire to be bride. The adults ultimately discover their game, and one uncle tells Arjie’s father "you have a funny one here" (14). Arjie is no longer allowed to play with the girls. When he questions his mother, she responds with "because the sky is so high and pigs can’t fly, that’s why" (19).
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