Aaron Nguyen, Biochemistry + English, Class of 2022
Brief Summary: The recent theory of petro-masculinity understands the various structural systems that have and continue to interact with the petroleum industry, such as settler-colonialism, racism, and sexism. This paper explores this concept in relation to one of the short stories in Bryan Washington’s Lot, “Shepherd.” Nguyen shows how the acts of the main character in “Shepherd” reflects a societal standard of petro-masculinity.
Houston is a city defined worldwide by an oil and gas industry that is tightly connected to images of white southern culture. As the “energy capital of the world,” much of Houston’s culture and global imagery draws from recent economic success in oil refining. In contrast, modern representations of the city also highlight the vast diversity of Houston communities. Although these two observations initially seem unrelated or strictly parallel, an extended look into the history of the Houston area reveals a more complicated relationship between Houston’s economic identity and its diverse population. In this essay, I trace the relationship between oil and gas industries and the perpetuation of social and economic disparities experienced by marginalized groups. I then translate this correlation to a modern context in order to identify its present-day ramifications in Houston through analyzing its presence in Brian Washington’s collection of short stories, Lot. In particular, I utilize the critical lens of petro-masculinity to reveal the connection between Houston’s fossil fuel industries and toxic masculine social structures and to demonstrate how Washington’s queer feminist interventions propose an alternative, sustainable future for Houston. In order to contextualize the concept of petro-masculinity in regard to these racially diverse communities, I begin by surveying the historical economies that have shaped Houston’s present-day identity, including those growing from slavery, indigenous dispossession, and the more recent exploits of fossil fuel industries. I then apply this history to an analysis of Lot.
In “Black-Brown Solidarity: Racial Politics of the New Gulf South,” the African American Studies scholar John Marquez traces the origins of minority populations in the Houston area to search for hybrid racial identities that have formed from the interactions and intersecting experiences between these groups. In understanding this history in conjunction with the economic development of Houston’s industries, the violence sustained against these diverse groups demonstrates that racial oppression was deeply integrated in the creation of the Houston oil and gas industry. First, the original European settlement in the region began with the removal and displacement of the indigenous Karankawa people. This initial colonization was then followed by several changes in land claims from Spain to Mexico to Texas, ultimately resulting in the annexation of Texas to the United States in 1845. In the years following, Houston grew in influence due to a burgeoning cotton industry that relied heavily on black slave labor until emancipation of slaves in Texas in 1865 (Marquez, 2). Indeed, the success of slave economies were early sources of wealth accumulation that would contribute, later, to making Houston a global economic center and lead to the development of vital infrastructures such as ports and railroads.
When oil was discovered in the region early in the twentieth century, these existing infrastructures accelerated Houston’s economic growth (Feagin, 1222). From there, Houston’s identity became intertwined with the oil and gas industry as its economic success catalyzed the development of the city and its social hierarchies. Thus, the link between the formation of the oil industry and social disparities within marginalized communities becomes clearer. From the displacement of indigenous peoples to the exploitation of slave labor, the success of Houston’s energy industry relied heavily on the oppression of people of color. However, this trend is not isolated to the past. In “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire,” Cara Daggett argues that interrogating the development of fossil fuel systems along with related social phenomena through the concept of “petro-masculinity” that postulates a connection between oil and gas industries and the perpetuation of white patriarchal rule identities (Daggett). In the case of Houston, the oil and gas industry continues to dominate general images of Houston as a city and community. By looking at the origins of this economic success in relation to exploited and displaced populations, we are able to locate social problems such as racial disparities in Houston within a wider historical and ongoing context.
What should be clear so far is that to develop dominant economic industries, business interests in the Houston area have historically sustained violence against diverse groups through colonization and the perpetuation of slavery. Even if this violence has been situated in the past, these efforts continue to cause damage in the present as well. Most notably, in the wake of growing efforts to reimplement fossil fuel initiatives in the United States, politicians and political groups have looked back on crude oil and coal with a reverence for historical societal images that many feminist and racial justice advocates and scholars, like Cara Daggett, wish to challenge. This nostalgia for fossil fuels signals not only a desire to continue with the damage that unsustainable fuel sources wreak on the environment, but also an impulse to perpetuate white patriarchal social structures that harm marginalized groups. In this way, the growing movement to preserve fossil fuel initiatives sustains the self-destructive nature of the oil and gas industry in both an environmental and societal sense.
Bryan Washington’s Lot addresses issues of petro-masculinity in Houston via its representation of the ramifications of these social and political movements. In his collection of stories, Washington recognizes the unique implications of petro-masculinity in Houston’s identity and, through emphasizing the self-destructive nature of these current political efforts to preserve fossil fuel interests, offers social solutions to safeguard the sustainability of Houston’s most vulnerable populations as well as the greater Houston community. By presenting stories from marginalized spaces within Houston, Washington emphasizes the destructive effects that Houston’s association with the fossil fuel industry continues to perpetrate on various, minority communities throughout the city. But instead of victimizing its characters, the novel frames black and brown queerness as both a response to petro-masculinity and a potential model for a more inclusive and sustainable social order in Houston. These stories about marginalized people occur in the foreground to present two possible futures: one where petro-masculine efforts continue to damage all Houston communities and another where the visions of marginalized groups can be used to fight back against these white patriarchal structures and change the course of Houston’s overarching narrative. In the story, “Shepherd,” Washington emphasizes these alternate paths by portraying the relationship between racially marginalized people and the dominant petro-masculine culture in Houston. In briefly shifting the setting from historically impoverished neighborhoods to one of Houston’s richest, River Oaks, “Shepherd” interrogates Houston’s history as a key player in petro-masculine structures and exposes how intersectional queerness both contends against and conforms to those structures.
In “Shepherd,” Washington tells the story of a biracial family that moves to River Oaks after the white American father becomes wealthy from working in the oil industry: “Our family moved, again, after my father landed the promotion. He recruited for an oil mogul downtown and the mogul had finally struck oil. Our new place sat on Shepherd and Willowick, in the middle of River Oaks, Houston’s oasis for new money” (Washington, 44). Even though the oil industry is rarely mentioned directly throughout the collection, the father’s involvement in the oil industry is emphasized as the key factor that allows the family to enter the wealthy River Oaks community. In this way, the story brings attention to the link between the fossil fuel industry and River Oaks and demonstrates the representation of petro-masculine culture within the community. From the onset of the story, Washington implicates River Oaks in Houston’s ongoing history of fossil fuel industries and the perpetuation of white patriarchal oppression.
In connecting Houston’s unique representation of petro-masculine culture to this specific neighborhood, the story situates the privilege possessed by River Oaks’ members within a greater conversation of historical violence and segregation sustained against marginalized groups. River Oaks has a reputation for being Houston’s most exclusive and wealthy community, housing some of Houston’s most powerful and influential individuals. However, the neighborhood remains an extremely guarded community. In addition to modern impressions about the racial homogeneity in River Oaks, the origin of the neighborhood demonstrates historically organized efforts to prohibit the integration of diverse individuals. For example, the founders of the community established an unspoken “gentleman’s agreement” at the beginning of the neighborhood’s development in order to exclude African-American people, Jews, and other minority groups (Lane). Lot’s “Shepherd”acknowledges these racial politics and extends them into the present by portraying the present-day racial climate in the community. Washington centers the story around a biracial family in which the mother is Jamaican and the father is a white American in order to complicate these initial assessments of River Oaks’ racial demographics.
Washington’s portrayal of River Oaks highlights the present social climate of this exclusive community as well as its present-day potential for change. On one level, the biracial status of the family signifies a growing racial tolerance within the upper Houston classes. Although the family may have a more privileged status due to the father’s whiteness, the fact that the family represents a fusion between white and minority identities demonstrates that there is a degree of acceptance for non-white individuals in River Oaks, highlighting signs of slow racial integration within the community. Underneath this surface, the community’s acceptance of the family also exposes the progression of petro-masculine movements. One consequence of petro-masculinity is the erasure of minority histories to preserve the domination of white, patriarchal histories as a prevailing societal identity. In doing this, the role that minority populations have historically played in developing communities is hidden and slowly forgotten. The progression of petro-masculine social orders requires the ongoing erasure of inconvenient histories in order to preserve the evolving image of petro-masculine societies. But, in this case, Washington’s representation of this process suggests that, as society progresses, the myth of white, patriarchal histories slowly becomes forgotten as well. The progression of petro-masculinity requires this amnesiac process to sustain white, patriarchal social orders. However, “Shepherd” demonstrates that this evolving social climate within River Oaks also hints at the conditions for change. As minority groups begin to integrate into guarded Houstonian communities such as River Oaks, the segregation of racial groups could slowly diminish, allowing for the elimination of petro-masculine structures from within communities themselves.
The story expands on this conversation of racial identity and diversity by introducing the intersection of queerness and demonstrating its potential as an oppositional force to petro-masculinity. In this new community, the story’s central family invites their cousin, Gloria, to come and stay with them as she recovers from a recent miscarraige. Gloria, like the mother, is Jamaican, but her social status is more complicated than the family’s because everyone suspects that she was working as a prostitute before coming to the US. In introducing family’s opinion of this suspicion, the narrator who is the son in the family explains, “I’d never in my life seen an actual whore (according to Nikki), a night worker (my father), or a calf in the wilderness (who else), so I looked her in the eyes for the thing that made it so; but all I saw was just a woman” (Washington, 46). Compared to the scathing judgment of his family, the narrator looks beyond Gloria’s position in society. At first glance, this difference in the narrator’s assessment might be attributed to his youth or naivety, but as Washington eventually explains, the narrator is different from his other family members because he is queer. The narrator’s queerness situates him outside of traditional representations of masculinity, giving him the ability to empathize with others on the social margins. Although Gloria and the narrator fit within the petro-masculine social order in different ways, their shared inability to fulfill white, patriarchal expectations places them both at odds with petro-masculine culture. Washington demonstrates that, by virtue of the narrator’s sexuality, the narrator does not emulate the same toxic masculine perspectives as his family and community. Thus, rather than readily accepting Gloria’s status in the petro-masculine hierarchy, the narrator’s fairer assessment stems from his representation of an alternative masculinity in contrast to the other family members’ acceptance of petro-masculinity.
However, the interaction between the narrator’s intersectional queerness and River Oaks’ embodiment of petro-masculine culture exposes the narrator’s inability to both belong in the River Oaks community and remain true to his queer identity. In the narrator’s first queer sexual experience, Washington describes how the narrator must exercise his queerness outside of the River Oaks community: “we reached a clearing beneath an overpass. And Okri and I laughed, just at the sight of each other… And we decided, or we came to the conclusion, that we should grope one another, tenderly, and then furiously; and we did this, wordlessly, touching without kissing… we never talked about it then, or since” (Washington, 57). Even though the narrator’s representation of queer masculinity helps him resist petro-masculinity within his family and community, Washington demonstrates that the physical manifestation of queerness cannot occupy the guarded space of River Oaks. Just as Gloria must accept her position within the petro-masculine hierarchy in order to remain within the River Oaks community, the narrator must conform to petro-masculine expectations in order to retain his claim to the neighborhood’s exclusive space. Compared to the growing racial tolerance within the River Oaks community, different sexualities are understood to be forbidden within that space.
The contradictory exclusion of queer identities and acceptance of diverse racial identities in River Oaks extends into the narrator’s conflict in coming to terms with both facets of his identity. As much as the narrator and his family represent a potential for change in River Oaks from a racial standpoint, the narrator’s dilemma in expressing his queerness within the neighborhood demonstrates how the community can also change the family. Conflicted about his sexual experience with his friend earlier, the narrator lashes out at Gloria and demands to learn more about her past: “I asked her to tell me about her work. She looked at me as if I were joking, or maybe it was because she hoped I was joking, but I wasn’t….I said that my mother had called her a whore. A prostitute. A soursop woman. I said if what my mother said was true, then the least she could do was prove it” (Washington, 58). This act of aggression against Gloria demonstrates how, as much as the family has the potential to change River Oaks, their claim to the neighborhood comes at a cost. In order to truly belong in the community and the privileges that come with that ownership, they must sufficiently conform to petro-masculine expectations. The narrator takes out the shame that he feels about queerness through this act of sexism by “using” Gloria to confirm his own place within the established social order. His abuse of the petro-masculine hierarchy demonstrates that, even though racially diverse individuals are slowly able to enter these guarded spaces, their emulation of petro-masculine expectations perpetuates its violent oppression of other marginalized groups. Even though the narrator is marginalized as a queer man, he still occupies a place of privilege because he can claim ownership of River Oaks and its petro-masculine implications. In emulating the toxic masculine judgments that his family passes onto Gloria, the narrator demonstrates his own internalized hatred of queerness as well as the destructive potential that this privilege holds. Additionally, he reveals that racial inclusion in these guarded, privileged spaces is not enough to dismantle the oppression perpetuated by petro-masculine social structures.
Even though both the narrator and Gloria are oppressed under the toxic masculine social order, Gloria recognizes that the narrator holds a higher status within the petro-masculine hierarchy. She eventually chooses to give the narrator what he demands: “Gloria was touching my cheek, and she was looking at my face, and then we were kissing… she’d maneuvered herself on top of me, she slipped some of me inside of her… I couldn’t do it, it wouldn’t work, I started crying, my god, until she finally set her ear on my shoulder and told me everything would be fine, everything would be okay, it would all turn out okay” (Washington, 60). Ultimately, the narrator learns that, even though he currently occupies space in the River Oaks community, he cannot entirely embody the expectations that come with that privilege. In finding ownership of a community framed around petro-masculine culture, the narrator believes that he must emulate the petro-masculine perspectives of that community. But, he discovers the destructive power of embodying those expectations and learns that, even though he is afraid of his own identity, his unique claim to both intersectional queerness and the guarded River Oaks community gives him a choice in how to wield his privilege.
This choice about how the narrator balances his identities and his privileges ultimately presents the potential paths in the future for the narrator as well as River Oaks. Following their sexual interaction, Gloria leaves Houston, yet the narrator refuses to say goodbye to her: “About a month later, Gloria flew back to Kingston… I didn’t show my face—I told everyone I was sick. My mother told me this didn’t matter… but my father said to leave me alone, it wouldn’t make anything better, and besides, I only felt that way because I loved her. This, he said, was obvious” (Washington, 60). In the final moments of the story, Washington demonstrates that the established social order dictates that the narrator will continue to succumb to petro-masculine expectations. Even though the family’s status as a biethnic household reveals a slow dissolution of the racialized borders within River Oaks, the community continues to exclude diverse sexual identities, ultimately perpetuating the overarching petro-masculine framework in Houston. Thus, River Oaks needs to detoxify its masculinities in conjunction with opening its racialized borders in order to dismantle the violent oppression of marginalized groups within the neighborhood as well as the greater Houston community. As the father demonstrates, the narrator could succumb to societal expectations and stop at claiming ownership of this privileged space as a racial minority by conforming to societal expectations and rejecting his queerness. In this way, the narrator would remain complicit in the petro-masculine forces that marginalize both Gloria and his true self. On the other hand, the narrator could choose to work against the natural inclination to accept petro-masculine privilege by taking ownership of his queer masculinity and standing against the established social order. The story ends without explaining which path the narrator chooses in order to broaden the societal implications of this choice and to demonstrate how the narrator’s choice mirrors the present-day choice shared by the greater Houston community. In this way, Washington utilizes this ambiguity to reveal the potential for change within these privileged spaces, but he explains that the fate of these communities ultimately depends on individual choices in how to leverage racial identity, sexuality, and privilege.
In exploring the interconnection between petro-masculine spaces, intersectional racial identity, and queerness, Byran Washington exposes the present and historical relationship between fossil fuel cultures and the oppression of various marginalized groups. By articulating the complex, modern-day implications of petro-masculine social orders with regard to his representation of diverse characters, he ultimately offers alternative forms of masculinity as a potential model for more sustainable social orders for Houston communities. By recognizing Houston’s unique situation within global petro-masculine hierarchies and tracing the erased history of marginalized racial groups in the region, we are able to explore beyond the superficial surface of Houston’s identity as the “energy capital of the world.” In doing so, we are also able to identify everyday counter movements that challenge the petro-masculine social order in Houston. Ultimately, in portraying stories from minority perspectives, Washington demonstrates that Houston’s future is not set in stone. Rather, diverse racial and sexual identities within Houston communities continue to work against white, patriarchal forces in order to envision sustainable and inclusive alternatives to petro-masculine cultures.
Works Cited
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Feagin, Joe R. “The Global Context of Metropolitan Growth: Houston and the Oil Industry.”
American Journal of Sociology, vol. 90, no. 6, 1985, pp. 1204–1230. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/2779634. Accessed 11 Apr. 2020.
Lane, Chris. “The Changing Face of Houston – River Oaks.” Houston Press, Houston Press, 17
Jan. 2019, www.houstonpress.com/arts/the-changing-face-of-houston-river-oaks-6389534
Márquez, John D. Black-Brown Solidarity: Racial Politics in the New Gulf South. University of
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Washington, Bryan. Lot: Stories. Riverhead Books, 2019.
