Going Bananas

The adolescent sons of an expatriated Chinese physicist visit her in the United States while she and her colleagues pursue the development of a massive particle collider with which to understand the origin of the known universe. A queer science fiction that engages the utopian impulses of the genre, not through the imagining of another world, but through the rendering of this world as other. All subjects are treated as alien, or as radical others who search for or advance different ideological, psychological or sexual ideals of belonging. Subjects oscillate between the contemplation of past societal traumas and idealizations of futurity that refuse to synthesize or resolve, but instead reveal a troubling satire of the present.

Gilbert and Edith Goodhue lack nothing in life except a child, which they desperately desire. Edith's brother Alan, who is interested in eugenics, suggests that they pay their chauffeur Joe and maid Nora to have a baby for them. While awaiting the proper time to elapse, Edith and Gilbert travel to Palm Beach for an extended vacation, where Gilbert, attempting to obtain a child for his wife, vamps a dancer with a baby. Edith misunderstands and becomes desperately jealous until Gilbert finally explains his motives, causing the two to renew their love with ardent fervor. Returning home, they discover that the maid has given birth to a baby boy, but is loath to part with him. Embarrassment follows as the couple puzzle over what to tell their friends who are awaiting the blessed event until Edith discloses that the Florida sunshine has worked wonders and that another baby is on its way.