Symbols Blackouts Justin Torres

The Hyena Laugh in Blackouts: A Queer Symbol of Recognition and Return

What Is the Hyena Laugh?

In Justin Torres's Blackouts, the hyena laugh appears within a children's story titled Who’s Afraid?, written by the character Zhenya Gay and retold by Juan to the narrator. The story is an allegory of a pre-Stonewall queer bar where male animals (all coded as queer men) protect a lost boy. When the boy returns safely to his family, he promises to signal his arrival with a laugh "like you, Hyena." The laugh is described in the novel as "the mark of the pansy, fearless; that high and happy bark; that scavenger’s yelp… that queer cry of recognition, the unmistakable laugh of the hyena." The hyena laugh thus becomes a coded signal—a way for queer people to announce their survival and safe return without exposing themselves to a hostile straight world.

Where the Symbol Recurs

The hyena laugh is introduced in Chapter 3, "The Kinship," when Juan recounts the full plot of Who’s Afraid? to the narrator. Earlier in the same chapter, the narrator has just described his own mugging and his subsequent attachment to a gold cross—a personal fetish object that serves a similar function of coded identity and survival. Later, in Chapter 8, "A Sort of Postface," the narrator reflects on the book he has written about Juan, framing it as an attempt to recover erased histories. The hyena laugh does not appear again explicitly, but its spirit echoes through the novel’s central concern with queer coded communication—the blacked-out pages of Sex Variants, the riddles Juan tells, the narrator’s own habit of wearing his cross. Each of these objects or gestures operates as a private sign within a community that has learned to speak in whispers and signals.

How the Meaning Changes

Taken at surface level, the hyena laugh is simply a plot device in Zhenya’s story: the boy alerts the animals that he is safe. But within the frame of Blackouts, the laugh accumulates deeper layers. It becomes a metaphor for the ways queer people have historically used coded language to find each other and affirm belonging. The hyena itself—a scavenger, often stigmatized for its laugh—mirrors the pathologization of queer people by institutions like psychiatry and the military. The laugh is “high and happy,” suggesting joy and defiance rather than shame. As the novel’s themes of erasure and recovery unfold, the laugh also represents the possibility of being heard and recognized across time, as the narrator tries to recover Jan Gay’s story and Juan’s own disappeared history.

Character Connections

Juan is the one who tells the story of the hyena laugh, and he himself embodies the laugh’s spirit. Earlier in Chapter 3, Juan describes his childhood ataques—physical eruptions of trauma that he interprets as legitimate responses to oppression. The hyena laugh, like the ataque, is an involuntary, embodied expression that defies medical pathologization. Juan teaches the narrator to laugh queerly “down into the abyss,” suggesting that humor and absurdity are survival tools.

Zhenya Gay, the creator of the story, was a children’s book illustrator and Jan Gay’s partner. Her inclusion in the novel points to the recovery of queer women’s artistic contributions. The fact that she wrote an allegorical children’s book about queer community in the 1960s—before Stonewall—shows that coded storytelling was itself a survival strategy.

The narrator (often called nene or “nene”) is the one who listens to Juan and later reconstructs the account. His own gold cross, described as a “fetish object,” functions similarly to the hyena laugh: a private talisman that signals belonging and resilience. By the end of the novel, the narrator’s manuscript becomes another form of coded communication, addressed to future readers who might recognize its truth.

Theme Connections

The hyena laugh is tightly woven into the novel’s major themes:

  • Erasure and Recovery of Queer History: The laugh is a sound that defies silence. Just as the blacked-out pages of Sex Variants need to be read through the redaction, the laugh must be heard as a trace of survival. The novel repeatedly asks how one can recover voices that were never recorded in official archives.

  • Storytelling as Survival: Zhenya’s allegory, Juan’s retelling, and the narrator’s eventual manuscript all demonstrate that telling stories—especially coded ones—keeps queer memory alive. The hyena laugh is the punchline of a story that itself enacts the theme of storytelling as a lifeline.

  • Institutional Violence and Pathologization: The hyena laugh is “the mark of the pansy,” a term used to stigmatize effeminate men. By reclaiming the laugh as fearless, the novel resists the pathologization that queer people faced in the DSM, in the military (via “Puerto Rican Syndrome”), and in Henry’s Sex Variants study.

  • Memory, Ambiguity, and the Unreliable Past: The laugh is a sound, not a document—ephemeral and unverifiable. This fits the novel’s insistence that memory is ambiguous and that facts are always embellished. The narrator warns in the postface: “Not all ambiguities need be resolved.”

  • Queer Kinship and Community: The animals in Who’s Afraid? form a makeshift family around the lost boy. The hyena laugh is the signal that this kinship network has succeeded in protecting and returning one of its own. It celebrates the bonds that form in underground spaces—bars, watering holes, the Palace itself.

Study Questions with Answers

Q1: In what way does the hyena laugh function as a form of coded communication within the allegory of Who’s Afraid??

A1: The laugh is a prearranged signal that the boy has returned safely to his family without exposing the animal community to danger. Because the animals cannot meet the family (who blame them for “stealing” the boy), the laugh allows the boy to affirm his safety without disclosing his companions. This mirrors the real-life need for queer people to communicate privately in hostile environments.

Q2: How does Juan’s own experience with ataques parallel the hyena laugh as an embodied, non-pathological form of expression?

A2: Juan describes his ataques as physical eruptions of accumulated trauma, not medical symptoms. Just as the hyena laugh is a bodily expression of joy and recognition, Juan’s ataques are involuntary releases that refuse the pathologizing frameworks of military psychiatry. Both are ways the body speaks truth when social norms forbid speech.

Q3: Why does the narrator’s gold cross serve a similar symbolic function to the hyena laugh? What does this suggest about the novel’s view of queer survival?

A3: The narrator never takes off the gold cross, treating it as a constant companion after his mugging. Like the hyena laugh, the cross is a visible yet coded marker of identity—it signals belonging to a community (and a history of violence and resilience) without needing explanation. Both objects show that queer survival often depends on portable, tangible symbols of connection that can be hidden or displayed as needed.

Q4: How does the hyena laugh connect to the novel’s broader project of recovering erased queer histories?

A4: The laugh is a sound that exists outside official records—it cannot be blacked out or redacted. By centering this ephemeral, joyful cry, Blackouts argues that queer history is carried not only in books and archives but in embodied gestures, coded languages, and oral traditions. The novel itself becomes a kind of hyena laugh: a signal to future readers that someone was here, that someone survived, and that someone chose to tell the story.