“Everyone is a Snake Shedding its Skin” – Identity Re/(de)formation in Kathleen Winter’s Annabel
“Everyone is a Snake Shedding its Skin” – Identity Re/(de)formation in Kathleen Winter’s Annabel

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the subversion of binary oppositions within identity and gender in Kathleen Winter’s 2010 debut novel Annabel. This peculiar Bildungsroman focuses on the complex and ambiguous life of an intersex child, Wayne Blake, and presents Wayne’s life as a fearful metamorphosis. The inevitable change in his/her nomadic identity becomes for Wayne and his/her family a source of the sublime. The child’s intersexuality breeds intolerance and emotional estrangement among relatives and in the small community of Croyden Harbour, Labrador. The fear of exposure forces Wayne to oscillate between his outer and inner selves as well as the masculine and feminine elements of his personality. Recurring images of a bridge function in the novel as the central metaphor of this duality and as a promise of a coexistence.

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