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118. Dream House as Hotel Room in Iowa City
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in In the Dream House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Queer Visibility
Christianity and Shame
Abuse, Trauma, and Healing
Storytelling, Responsibility, and Freedom
Summary
Analysis
In the present, Machado describes a short story in which a group of lesbian friends talk about their friend’s house which was vandalized. Though one of them suggests they all band together to help the friend, another in the group says that they have other things, “community things,” to do instead.
In this story, the idea of community seems to have a double meaning—one is the immediate community that’s under threat, and the other is the idea of a solid, positive, and abstract community that excludes the threatened friend.
Themes
Machado says that the queer community can fail itself by trying too hard to “save face.” When the queer community started debating domestic abuse in lesbian relationships, some lesbians tried to restrict the term “abuse” to the actions of men: women would never abuse each other! In one of the first domestic lesbian abuse trials, the sole lesbian member of the jury was reluctant to place blame on the defendant because she didn’t want to convict a fellow queer woman—ignoring the fact that the victim was also a queer woman.
When a community excludes certain members in order to maintain a simple narrative about itself, it fails to offer the solidarity and support its most vulnerable members need. Machado highlights the fact that when the queer community prioritizes the abstract issues of representation and reputation, it neglects to confront and deal with a less convenient, more complex reality.
Themes
