Instructions: Discuss a specific episode or passage from chapters 1-4 of Bird of 400 Voices that makes you think about diversity, intersectionality, and/or otherness. What insights on diversity, intersectionality, and/or otherness does the episode or passage inspire you to have? How does your insight on the episode or passage connect to what Crenshaw asserts about intersectionality or what Wuthnow affirms about othering? You should quote from a specific passage from one of these two theoretical sources as a way to give emphasis to the connection that you see. Consider using one of the selected passages below, or you can select a different one.
In your writing, cultivate a critical and authentic voice. Include a works cited formatted according to MLA guidelines. See the handouts menu for writing resources. 3+ pages.
Submit paper in hard copy and stapled in class on September 10. The deadline is noon.
Selected Quotes
“Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power.”
(Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait,” in “Kimberlé Crenshaw” 111).
“Intersectionality has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion” (111).
(Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait,” in “Kimberlé Crenshaw” 111).
“In practice, however, othering appears to be a common way in which claims about respectability are made. Who qualifies as a respectable person or group and what it means to be respectable are socially constructed by identifying someone who seems deficient. The Other’s deficiencies may give a clearer sense by way of negative example of how respectable people should behave than anything else. The other is often maligned because of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, or sexual orientation. The other may also be marginalized in less obvious ways, such as because of not grooming properly, speaking too loudly, displaying emotion in inappropriate ways, or appearing to have temporarily lost one’s mind” (“Cultural Diversity and Symbolic Boundaries,” by Robert Wuthnow, 259).
