For the past week, I've been going through the most recent revision to our Composition Reader project: an addition of about 80 new articles and short stories, many by "women of color." And I keep noticing, over and over, something that has me a little disturbed.
It seems that "women of color" only ever write about being women of color. I think, though, it has more to do with the fact that the only black and hispanic women writers who get any recognition do so because they write about being black and hispanic women. It's a niche. The industry of words has a place for them, and it's a limited place. But we sure are opening up the canon!
Your mission (or mine) if it should be accepted: to find black women, and hispanic women, and asian women whose writing is published without being contained to the limited scope of their identities.
...politics, pop culture, and self-deprecation...
9.02.2004
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1 comment:
Queer women of color doubly so. Erika Lopez touches on being a (queer) woman of color (Flaming Iguanas, They Call Me Mad Dog, Lap Dancing for Mommy, etc), but since it's sort of autobiographical, it would be hard not to. But her books have a hell of a lot more going on than gender, race and sexual identity issues.
-melissa
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