Queer Gothic otherness of Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms and Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits

Otherness is the Gothic motif that has become a metaphor for all kinds of oppression and discrimination—its signification went from showing a threat and emphasising the dangerousness of one that is beyond society to pondering the feelings and experiences of the outcast. As such, it became the important mode of describing the internal struggles of queer people, their self-doubt, and the fear of the reaction they might receive should they ever come out. This paper undertakes an analysis of Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits (1989)—two Southern Gothic novels, both of which are describing the struggles of queer characters, adolescent boys who have been cast as the other by their environment. The article examines how both novels portray otherness and the communities’ reactions to this difference. Truman Capote in Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) connects the struggle of finding one’s identity to finding one’s reflection in others. He uses the Gothic atmosphere to indicate the protagonist’s fear of abandonment and to portray a difficult journey of discovering one’s identity and growing into it—in his depiction, otherness is something inherent that is meant to be discovered and embraced. The author creates a rather optimistic tale of the other finding his identity, his place and people in the confusing world. His others do not experience any guilt or shame over their identities—instead, they accept them. In contrast, A Visitation of Spirits (1989) by Randall Kenan focuses on the idea that otherness is ascribed, and not inherent. The author describes a hermetic, exclusionist community that mercilessly punishes any deviation from the heteronormative norm. He shows how the other is created, and the internal costs of the threat of exclusion.