Alyssa Ollivier-Tabukashvili
This article is part of the NOTCHES series on The Languages of Queer History.
‘I have four problems: French? Algerian? Girl? Boy?’: the spectrum of Nina’s identity in Garçon manqué [Tomboy] (2000) by Nina Bouraoui probes into the matter of labels and categories of being, the parallels between and intersections of dealing with nation, culture, gender identity and queer desire.

Despite their contribution to the war for independence, Algerian women have historically been excluded from the vision of a liberated Algeria: freedom and independence for the nation did not mean freedom and independence for women in the eyes of the succeeding government, which imposed conservative family laws in the years following independence. Simultaneously, queer studies of the Maghreb and, more frequently of Islamic cultures in general, have centred on the phallus, relating to an active/passive binary of sex, where homosexuality is often depicted and described as an act—not an identity—usually committed by men in secret, much like the ancient Roman dichotomies of sexuality (see Contested Borders by William J. Spurlin and Queer Nations by Jarrod Hayes for more on this issue). This under-acknowledged space of Algerian women and their (queer) desires opens an opportunity to move towards the dismantling of national, cultural, societal and linguistic borders. We can examine this specifically through the ambiguous language of identity—gendered and cultural—in Garçon manqué, which provides an insight on the challenges of identity, but also the decolonising potential found in the language of the queer, diasporic Algérienne.
This is examined in the postcolonial context of Algeria which—without meaning to sound too reductive—began in 1962 following 132 years of French colonialism (1830–1962) and a six-year war for independence (1954–62). The Maghreb region’s complex history, which can stretch 3000 years back to the Punic invasion, has resulted in an impressive multilingual zone. Today, Algeria’s official languages are Arabic and the indigenous languages collectively named ‘Tamazight’; additionally, as a result of France’s colonisation, French is widely understood and read, especially among the Amazigh (indigenous) communities. The plurality of identity and language was also fostered by the multiple waves of migration from North Africa to hexagonal France, especially in the years following World War II for greater political and economic freedom, and some attempts again after Algerian independence in 1962, due to political and social instability.
Nina Bouraoui has received wide recognition for her writing about her cultural identity and lesbian/queer sexuality. She was born in 1967 to a French mother and Algerian father in Rennes, France, and moved to Algeria at the age of two, where the family stayed until 1981, returning to Rennes and remaining there permanently. Her novel, Garçon manqué, is a form of autofiction, tracing these moves between France and Algeria and explores her own relationship to her Algerianness, Frenchness, and queerness, whilst negotiating a space marked simultaneously by Western Islamophobia, Islamic homophobia, neo-colonialism and both French and Algerian patriarchy.
The parallels of navigating an identity as both queer and diasporic is most plainly shown in the following quote towards the end of Garçon manqué:
Tous les matins, je vérifie mon identité. J’ai quatre problèmes : Française ? Algérienne ? Fille ? Garçon?
[Each morning, I check my identity. I have four problems: French? Algerian? Girl? Boy?]
Here, Bouraoui shows the impossibility of expressing her plural identity and the fluidity that accompanies it. Notice that she states she has four problems, rather than two. French, Algerian, girl, boy, are each a question of their own, functioning perhaps like a spectrum, as opposed to a binary opposition of French or Algerian, girl or boy. This daily performance of both gender and culture reflects the problem of in/authenticity that troubles diasporic and queer individuals, in which queer individuals are the ‘other’ in heteronormative, cisnormative systems and the diaspora are the ‘other’ of the nation: both are viewed as inauthentic imitations of what might be viewed the ‘original’ (see Impossible Desires by Gayatri Gopinath for an in-depth exploration of this issue).
This problem of so-called inauthenticity, however, comes from the outside, the viewer—the upholder of oppressive systems of nation borders, heteronormativity, gender-binary constructs—is the one who the narrator must perform to. It is a problem that comes from comments and questions from strangers and family members, a battle she has to fight with others, not necessarily within herself.
The narrator reiterates this problem, and its specific intersection of (neo-)colonialism with queerness, in her observation of how others seem to judge her:
Les Algériens ne me voient pas. Les Français ne comprennent pas [. . .] Leurs yeux cherchent sur mon corps une trace de ma mère, un signe de mon père [. . .] Qui a gagné sur moi ? Sur ma voix ? Sur mon visage ? Sur mon corps qui avance ? la France ou l’Algérie ?
[Algerians don’t see me. The French don’t understand [. . .] Their eyes search for a trace of my mother, a sign from my father, on my body [. . .] Who’s won over me? Over my voice? Over my face? Over my developing body? France or Algeria?]
The French mother and the Algerian father each represent their respective nations, but for the narrator they also reflect possibilities of gender identity. Bouraoui’s use of the verb ‘gagner sur’, meaning ‘to win over’, or in some contexts ‘to beat [in a challenge]’, reflects the inability of current societal systems to conceptualise in between, ambiguous, or hybrid identities – whether national, cultural, or gendered. One cultural identity must dominate the other, which becomes the inauthentic, marginalised part of the self; simultaneously, the cisnormative gender binary must be upheld, and Bouraoui’s narrator cannot perform as anything but one or the other, girl or boy.
But Bouraoui’s narrator personal conceptualisation of their identity offers something revolutionary. She asserts:
Je reste entre les deux pays. Je reste entre deux identités.
[I stay between the two countries. I stay between two identities.]
Although referring to the two countries France and Algeria, the narrator’s reiteration of the close ties between culture and gender make clear that this experience of inbetweenness extends beyond national affiliation, preferring a rather ambiguous identity, resonant of Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity, or the ‘third space’, crucially characterised by inbetweenness rather than the mixing of two or more separate cultures.
Moving away from the aforementioned fixed structures, through a sort of un-labelling that is facilitated by their diasporic existence, becomes a revolutionary, anti-colonial expression. The narrator circumvents the standardisations of binaries and performance—of gender and culture—to present a self whose existence opens us to the possibilities of dismantling borders.
Alyssa Ollivier-Tabukashvili is a doctoral student in literary translation at the University of Oxford. Their thesis explores the decolonising potential in translating francophone Algerian literature into English, highlighting the possibility for activism in translation practice. Her further research interests include the gothic and horror, queer and feminist postcolonialism, and diasporic writing/expression.

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