Representation
For my final project, I wanted to do something to address the subject of intersectionality. In my personal experiences, I’ve seen how too often, conversations about race are often eclipsed by other advocacies for social justice. While advocacies for causes like feminism are utterly important and necessary, dismissing the relevance of race in dialogues about equality only increases the gap that minorities must bridge to achieve their recognition and rights. I want to do something that gives race its representation in these conversations.
I decided to create something akin to Yedda Morrison’s Darkness by taking a piece of classical feminist literature and whiting-out everything except instances in which minorities are represented. In books like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening or Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, minorities wander in and out of the narratives, either lacking depth or characterized as vicious, negative stereotypes. My project will make them the subject of their stories. I’m still figuring out which texts to use, but I hope to use a novel or novels that English students are familiar with, so that it challenges their understanding of intersectionality when it comes to literary criticism. As for form, I will either construct a narrative using these selected passages or create an anthology of the instances in which minorities are represented in these texts.
