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This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that the text contains the possibility for another, less conservative Canada than the predominately white, masculinist and heteronormative model that appears on the surface. Lemire's text acts dually as one that writes a particular kind of Canada: one that makes claim to rural life as freeing, that centralizes particular forms of masculinity, and that makes claims to rightful ownership and occupancy on behalf of those citizens with ties to the land rooted equally in settler lineages and a combined commitment and ability to make the land productive. In accordance with the logics of extermination that make up the foundation for modern settler sexualities, and by extension modern settler structures of power, indigenous populations are necessarily excluded from all markers of proper occupancy that the text puts forth.

This chapter begins by presenting the role of Christiane Taubira in defending and promoting the 'mariage pour tous' legislation in France, including the references made to the work of Léon Gontron-Damas. This is then linked to two conceptual signposts: firstly, Tzvetan Todrov's La Conquête de l’Amérique (1982) and his exploration of 'the two elementary figures of alterity'; and secondly, Didier Eribon's Une Morale du minoritaire (2001), which makes links between the social processes of inferiorisation inherent to class society, colonialism, and homophobia. This conceptual section will then be followed by an analysis of Caribbean sexualities, and their theorisations, in relation to the specificities of Guyane, including the racial and sexual inversions associated with the period of the penal colony. Positing an active queerING in this context – with the emphasis on the process - and its capacity creatively to build on the anomalies of Guyane's history and contemporary reality, the article ends by looking at recent fiction that exemplifies this process.

No novel since Uncle Tom’s Cabin achieved the celebrity and cultural impact of To Kill a Mockingbird in regards to race in America. The chapter explores Lee’s youthful experiments in writing and gender-bending, and discusses how her first unpublished novel, Go Set a Watchman, approached themes both repressed and continued in Mockingbird. Using ideas from Queer Theory, the chapter argues that Lee’s racial liberalism is less comforting when read through the lens of her gender-bending children and closeted narrator, showing how the plots about Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are finally brought together. Analysis of Lee’s college writings expose her early interest in satirizing Southern racial politics, while biographical information from those years supports hypotheses about her queering of sexual norms.

Extending the theoretical lens further, this final chapter moves beyond the initial discussions of gender to consider the significance of sexuality in contemporary feminisms. After some initial reflection on the political significance of sexuality, the main sections of literary analysis engage with how sexuality has been conceptualised and continually re-positioned in feminist discourses. The notion of choice is central to this analysis and through a reading of Kalbinder Kaur’s story this chapter considers the implications of sexuality and women’s choice in the context of race and ethnicity. As such, this first section takes a range of short stories as individual textual moments and scrutinises the dialogue these narratives purport between seemingly diverse feminisms. The section on ‘Sexual Transgressions?’ examines sexuality as a site of political resistance for women, and considers how the ageing and culturally “othered” body is positioned in relation to sexuality. The final part of this chapter questions how the politics of queer theory interact with feminisms via the locus of sexuality in the writings of Kay and Smith.

This Conclusion explores how the imperative “to eat well” has been an undercurrent, a connecting thread, linking disparate arguments about food and formation within the figures and texts explored. Gastronomy inevitably carries with it a set of social, physiological, and intellectual valences regarding the power of nourishment in human development. The simplicity of the phrase “eat well” obscures the complex of ideologies in which a community gathers and to which its individuals are held accountable. The phrase thus evokes a process of growth and development, at once essentially materialistic and profoundly symbolic. What else is gastronomy, then, but a kind of socializing curriculum, a system for incorporating ambient cultural values into one’s own person? A meal materializes the porous boundary between our individual bodies and the social body in which we participate. Drawing upon theorists such as Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, this conclusion considers whether the trope of milk and solid food might be wrested from its traditional and more restrictive use in regulating bodies and minds. Is it possible to imagine a new Pauline gastronomy that focuses not on power exerted but rather on the vulnerability shared between eater and feeder?