Means of Escape, Means of Invention: Hindu Figures and Black Pop Culture in Rakesh Satyal's Blue Boy

Abstract

Rakesh Satyal's 2009 coming of age novel Blue Boy is narrated by Kiran, a flamboyant second generation Indian-American boy on the edge of puberty, who seeks to make a place for himself in the homogeneous early 1990s Cincinnati suburb where his family lives. Kiran is drawn to two icons: Krishna and Whitney Houston. This paper argues that through Kiran's twin obsessions, Satyal's novel demonstrates the way that engaging with the spiritual, the mythical, and the popular can be a powerful and generative means through which the second generation can resist being overdetermined by history and social expectations.