A broken ”immigrant novel”?

Gender and genre in Maria Navarro Skarangers Alle utlendinger har lukka gardiner (All foreigners keep their curtains closed)

Abstract

The article argues that in the 2000s, the understanding of, and debate around, the ”immigrant novel” has been genderless. Hence, the tendency has been to use the term to describe novels written by men, about men with immigrant backgrounds. This, in turn, might be related to an implied expectation that the ”immigrant novel” is a Bildungsroman. From a feminist point of view, and with Maria Navarro Skaranger’s Alle utlendinger har lukka gardiner (All foreigners keep their curtains closed, 2015) as my case, I claim that: 1) reading the novel as rendering a general, rather than gendered, account of the experiences of a multicultural generation, overlooks significant sociological and literary aspects of the novel, 2) assuming that the novel is to be evaluated as a Bildungsroman leads to a misjudgment of its thematic and literary qualities, and 3) second- and third-wave intersectional feminist theory sharpens the reader’s under­standing of the importance of the family’s men, especially the protagonist’s brothers, in the development of the young, female protagonist.