Volume VI Special Issue V June 2026

Name of Author : Akalya. H., Dr.R.S.Regin Silvest

Title of the paper : Queering the Borderlands: Bodies and Identity beyond Western Frame Works in So Far from God by Ana Castillo

Abstract: This study critically examines So Far from God by Ana Castillo and explains it through a theoretical perspective of queer theory and borderlands studies. Through this novel, they face challenges to the dominant Western construction of identity based on fixed dualism of gender, sexuality, culture, and spirituality. However, they are located within a cultural context where narrative is identified as fluid, hybrid, and evolving. This paper explores how feminine subjectivities are shaped by both oppression and resistance within patriarchal and gender roles. Castillo uses magical and indigenous epistemologies to interrogate Western paradigms of rationality and linearity, thereby validating alternative forms of knowledge and experience. By arguing queerness in the novel, it extends sexuality and resistance beyond dominant culture, social and ideological frameworks. So Far from God helps to form identity as a process that contributes to a broader decolonial perspective on body, gender and subjectivity

Keywords : Queer theory, Borderlands, Chicana Literature, Hybridity, Identity Formation

DOI :

Page Number : 57-62