Black feminist thought and Black feminist autoethnography are the theoretical and methodological tools that I use to explore transnational identity construction as a Black, Trinidadian–American woman who has experienced hyper(in)visibility. Three letters capture my epiphanic moments as the outsider-within. I stage an interaction with the late literary-activist–scholar, James Baldwin, to address identity-making through race and transnationality, and to problematize interpersonal, structural, and disciplinary forms of power that shape my identity. My critical autoethnography is a self-story—a story that is always navigating between dual citizenships and culture. I place my epiphanic moments in conversation with those of James Baldwin to highlight Black experience from the past and present to provide new ways of narrating difference.
AhmedS. (2013). Strange encounters: Embodied others in post-coloniality. Routledge.
2.
AhmedS. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.
3.
AlexanderB. K. (1999). Performing culture in the classroom: An instructional (auto) ethnography. Text and Performance Quarterly, 19(4), 307–331.doi:10.1080/10462939909366272
4.
AlexanderM. J. (2006). Pedagogies of crossing: Meditations on feminism, sexual politics, memory, and the sacred. Duke University Press.
5.
BaldwinJ. (1951). Many thousands gone. Notes of a Native Son, 29.
BaldwinJ. (1984). Revolutionary hope: A conversation between James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. Essence, 15(8), 72–74.
8.
BaldwinJ. (1993). Another country. Vintage.
9.
BaldwinJ. (2017). I am not your Negro: A major motion picture directed by Raoul Peck. Vintage.
10.
BaldwinJ.BuckleyW. FJr. (1965). Debate: Is the American dream at the expense of the American Negro?Sponsored by the Cambridge Union Society, Cambridge University.
11.
BaldwinJ.MeadM. (1972). A rap on race. Corgi.
12.
BondC. (2008). Language Speech and Difference in Their Eyes were Watching God. InBloomH. (Ed.), Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations (New ed., pp.41–46). Infobase Publishing.
13.
BoylornR. M. (2006). E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one). Qualitative Inquiry, 12(4), 651–680.doi:10.1177/1077800405282798
14.
BrodyJ. D. (1995). Hyphen-nations. Inpp.CaseS. E.BrettP.FosterS. L. (Eds.), Cruising the performative: Interventions into the representation of ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality (pp.149–162). Indiana University Press.
15.
ButlerJ. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531.doi:10.2307/3207893
16.
CollinsP. H. (1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), S14–S32.doi:10.2307/800672
17.
CollinsP. H. (2009). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (3rd ed.). Routledge.
18.
DavisO. I. (1998). A black woman as rhetorical critic: Validating self and violating the space of otherness. Women’s Studies in Communication, 21(1), 77–90.doi:10.1080/07491409.1998.10162414
19.
De CerteauM. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. F. Rendall, Trans.). University of California Press.
20.
D’SouzaR. A.PalM. (2018). Encountering the postcolonial in academia. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 7(3), 361–372.doi:10.1108/JOE-10-2017-0046
21.
ElgrablyJ. (1984). James Baldwin, the art of fiction No. 78. The Paris Review, (91) 48–82.
22.
GaileyJ. (2014). The hyper (in) visible fat woman: Weight and gender discourse in contemporary Society. Springer.
23.
GriffinR. A. (2012). I am an angry black woman: Black feminist autoethnography, voice, and resistance. Women’s Studies in Communication, 35(2), 138–157.doi:10.1080/07491409.2012.724524
24.
HallS. (2017). Familiar stranger: A life between two islands. Duke University Press.
25.
hooksb. (1984). From margin to center. South End Press.
26.
hooksb. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, think black. South End Press.
27.
HoustonM. (1992). The politics of difference: Race, class, and women's communication. InRakowL. (Ed.), Women making meaning: New feminist directions in communication (pp.45–59). Routledge.
28.
HoustonM. (2000). Writing for my life: community-cognizant scholarship on African-American women and communication. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24(5), 673–686.doi:10.1016/S0147-1767(00)00023-7
29.
JonesS. H. (2008). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. InDenzinN.LincolnY. S. (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (Vol. 3, pp.205–239). Sage.
30.
LordeA. (2007). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.
31.
MadisonD. S. (2011). Critical ethnography: Method, ethics, and performance (2nd ed.). Sage publications.
32.
McClaurinI.. (Ed.). (2001). Black feminist anthropology: Theory, politics, praxis, and poetics. Rutgers University Press.
33.
MowattR. A.FrenchB. H.MalebrancheD. A. (2013). Black/female/body hypervisibility and invisibility: A black feminist augmentation of feminist leisure research. Journal of Leisure Research, 45(5), 644–660.
34.
Oliha-DonaldsonH. (2018). Let’s talk: An exploration into student discourse about diversity and the implications for Intercultural competence. Howard Journal of Communications, 29(2), 126–143.doi:10.1080/10646175.2017.1327379
35.
RomanoJ. (1979). James Baldwin writing and talking. New York Times Book Review, 23(3), 36–37.
36.
SedgwickE. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. University of California Press.
37.
WhiteR. E. T. (1992). Autoethnography and the sense of self in the novels of Toni Morrison [Doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa].
38.
XuK. (2013). Theorizing difference in intercultural communication: A critical dialogic perspective. Communication Monographs, 80(3), 379–397.doi:10.1080/03637751.2013.788250
