Writing Intersectional Identities

Janelle Adsit is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Humboldt State University, USA. She is editor of Critical Creative Writing: Essential Readings on the Writer's Craft (2018) and author of the book Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing: Threshold Concepts to Guide the Literary Writing Curriculum (2017). Renée M. Byrd is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Humboldt State University, USA. Her research focuses on race, gender, and mass imprisonment. Her writing can be found in the journal Social Justice, Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics and on her blog Persistent Connections at www.persistentconnections.wordpress.com.

What a bold, ambitious, and, entirely necessary book Writing Intersectional Identities is. In it, Adsit and Byrd radically examine critical debates within cultural and identity theory and politics to consider how these debates open new possibilities, challenges, and responsibilities for creative writers. Historically wide-ranging and intellectually expansive, the book grounds keywords such as “appropriation,” “intersectionality,” and “race,” in rich, succinct, and timely discussions that provide countless opportunities for further exploration. But that’s not all. Because even as Adsit and Byrd take on some of the most pressing issues in the larger fields of English and cultural studies, they refuse to look away from what these might mean for creative writing, its students and its teachers. I wish I had this book when I was starting out. It would have helped me a lot, and it would have helped my students too.

• Acknowledgements IntroductionFor StudentsFor InstructorsAppropriationAudience Authenticity Author Belonging Body Class Colonialism Community Consciousness Counternarrative Diaspora DisabilityEmotionEssentialismGender Globalization Identity Indigenous Intersectionality Language MinoritizedMulticulturalism National Positionality Power Privilege Race ReligionRepresentation Sexuality Bibliography and Suggested Reading