Intersectionality

Namitha Rathinappillai (she/they) is a queer, Tamil, disabled poet and academic living on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabeg territory, colonially known as Ottawa, Canada. They are a two-time Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (CFSW) team member and represented Ottawa at the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam (CIPS) in 2021. She published her first chapbook titled Dirty Laundry with Battleaxe Press in November of 2018. In 2019, they won the RBC Youth Ottawa Spirit of the Capital Award for Arts and Culture. Having completed her Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University in 2021, Namitha is now an MA Candidate in Sociology at York University.

Listen to the audio version of this text, performed by the author.

Intersectionality: A Play In 3 Acts

Act I.

I am woman when I am raised in the air by the doctor,
my gender, declared by my genitals.
I wear a tongue-in-cheek shade of pink to every occasion.
A bow in my hair so that my girlhood never goes unnoticed.
Strangers in my life read my future like a crystal ball.
Tell me I will remain untouched until worthy,
pure until union,
beautiful before anything else.
All this read from the palm of a newborn infant.
I am told and not asked what I want.
My life, a road trip I am given the directions for but never the keys to.
I am taught to be out of sight,
silent, preferably.
During conversations,
during arguments,
during sex.

Act II.

I am (woman and) brown at age five when I think my best friend more attractive than me
because of and not despite
her complexion.
I learn to pray every morning that when I wipe down the foggy mirror,
my distorted reflection, an unknown complexion,
will be a white face, instead.
I learn a new lesson on silence.
I do not move when the white girls compare their tanned forearms to mine in the blistering heat,
do not flinch when I am spoken over by the white people in the room.
In my own family, this lesson of silence is one I am homeschooled for, too.
I am taught to be out of sight when I am not serving others.
My only companions in the kitchen are the cardamom pods in the milk tea,
mocking me.

Act III.

I am (woman and brown and) queer at age 18 when I leave my high school in the dust
and finally see faces like mine love the way I have been embarrassed to do for years.
I meet queer adults with dark skin and know now that I am the descendant
of something beautiful.
Something worth a lineage.
I learn yet another lesson on silence when the white gays talk about their families that know,
and still love them the same.
When they share coming out stories like it is hazing to be accepted into queerness,
I look at my palms and realize
I do not know where these intersecting lines will lead me,
but I know it will be somewhere new.

Epilogue.

I am woman at birth
brown at five,
queer at 18.
These parts of me found in myself in succession,
and now, I am all at once.