Shyam Selvadurai, in Funny Boy, and Timothy Mo, in The Redundançy of Courage, break new ground in the portrayal of a coming of age novel by choosing gay protagonists to tell their own story. While there are stark differences between the two­Selvadurai’s is much younger and naive, while Mo’s is worldlywise and a bit effete- the two books are important examples of authors finding a new (and challenging) agent to demonstrate that alterity has a voice in the building of nations in a postcolonial age that cannot ignore cultural migration in the processes of globalization.