Ophelia’s winning piece, “Hermaphroditism and Culling Adaptations of the Blue-Banded Hawk,” begins as a fictionalized academic article, and then shifts to discuss gender dynamics, performance, and familial roles—all within the footnotes. We’re happy to share this interview with the author, who takes us behind the scenes of this layered work.
Rebecca Paredes: You submitted this piece for our Gender Trouble challenge, which asked writers to pull apart gender categories: heteronormativity, roles, and bodies. How did that prompt inform this story?
Ophelia Wong: The prompt naturally channeled me into the works of Judith Butler. In Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, she poses a question, paraphrased here: whether to be a woman is, by social definition, to be in an oppressed situation. I crafted my story while being unable to get her words out of my mind. I wished to sever the definition of woman from oppressive gender roles, revealing how patriarchal imbalances of power have no biological basis and are socially conditioned. I also aimed to expose and dismantle heteronormative ideology that perpetuates patriarchal hierarchies on a familial level.
RP: The framing device for this piece is an academic article about the blue-banded hawk, but the footnotes tell a coming-of-age story. How did you land on that structure? As far as I can tell, the blue-banded hawk is fictional—was this based on the dynamics of a real species?
OW: The blue-banded hawk is based on two species — Harris’s hawk and the blue-banded goby. The former is the only matriarchal and social raptor species, while the latter is a hermaphrodite fish species. In a social group, the largest female goby may change sex to replace the single dominant male and will assume sex-linked roles, such as caring for offspring. By drawing on the social dynamics of these two species, I could reshape relationships between behavior and sex and gender. I settled on creating the blue-banded hawk, rather than the Harris’s goby, as birds are better known for sexual dimorphism and imbalanced courtship behaviors.
The academic structure of my piece reflects my realization that non-heteronormativity is accepted as a natural fact in every species but ours. Presented with a scientific article on sexual ambiguity and transitions within blue-banded hawks, we might show impartiality, or even interest. Yet by replacing the hawk with a human, this very evolutionary phenomenon becomes unnatural and disputable. By integrating a coming-of-age narrative, I underscore the irony of rejecting a natural phenomenon but accepting the destructive consequences of our rigid gender roles—the real evolutionary contradiction.
RP: In the footnotes, cooking and eating function as a clear way that gender roles exist and are ultimately subverted. Can you talk about your thought process with food in the footnotes compared to how the blue-banded hawk approaches feeding? I’m thinking about these lines, which change so much once we read the accompanying footnote: “Though biologically greater in size, females often display fasting behaviors.3 This stereotypic behavior is hypothesized to be a stress response.”
OW: Through these lines, I convey how social enforcement of gender expectations can often be harmful and counterintuitive to maintaining biological and psychological health. In the footnotes, I explore how women are socially conditioned to reject biological changes, such as weight gain or physical manifestations of age, while the biological growth and nutritional requirements of men are adequately supported from youth.
Within both my protagonist’s family and the kettle of the blue-banded hawk, offspring feast on the labor and sacrifice of the mother, inherited by her daughters. When male hawks seize food from the dominant female, the female, other males, and offspring, lose out. I wished to reflect how this polarizing imbalance of gender roles is also detrimental for father and son, who become unable to provide for themselves and deprived of strong familial bonds. By disrupting the motif of cooking, when the protagonist instead buys food for her sister, I wished to convey how adequate nurture can occur without extensive domestic labor. Ultimately, I endeavored to reassert my belief that the redistribution of domestic duties and dissolution of gender expectations would be greatly beneficial for social and evolutionary longevity.
RP: Is there anything else you’d like to share about this piece, or anything you’re working on now?
OW: I’m currently polishing up a few past works so they are ready for publication online! I have a few vignettes arising from recurring dreams, a sonnet inspired by a rat dissection, and stories stemming from disjointed phrases that have tumbled into my head. And as always, I’m chipping away at the same fantasy manuscript I’ve been working on since forever. It’s a very different genre, but similarly a social commentary—an exploration of prejudice and systemic injustice, gender identity and family, all alongside a heavy dose of sorcery. You can keep up with my writing @the.poets.narcissus on Instagram!
I am beyond grateful for the support from you and your team, and the space—fortified against AI—that you have crafted for writers to express their works. If nothing else, I implore readers to interrogate entrenched social beliefs—whether they manifest as misinformed prejudices or oppressive conventions. As Butler asserts, we must disentangle our perceptions of minority groups from narratives of marginalization.
