The imposition of "impostership": writing against heteronormative binaries in Modernist texts

James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts, and Djuna Barnes's Nightwood were written in different historical and cultural situations, yet each author uses their own narrative mode to show the dialogic nature of the public/private sphere, the constructedness of gendered and heteronormative cultural signs, as well as the pain that individuals endure trying to perform the roles associated with these signs. By demonstrating the melancholia and despair of characters whose desires misalign with their societal and self-determined roles, these authors create works that function as political acts, demonstrating the importance of having a multiplicity of views and a spectrum of gender and sexuality.