Intersectionality in Literature
Introduction
Intersectionality is a theoretical framework that examines how different forms of identity and oppression — race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and others — interact and overlap. The term was coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, but the ideas it describes have been central to women’s literature and feminist criticism for much longer. Intersectional approaches to literature attend to the complexity of identity and the multiple ways in which characters and writers can be marginalised or privileged. They insist that we cannot understand gender in isolation from other dimensions of human experience.
The Origins of Intersectionality
Crenshaw developed the concept of intersectionality to address the limitations of single-axis frameworks for understanding discrimination. She argued that Black women experience discrimination that is both racial and sexual, and that the law — which treated race and sex as separate categories — was not equipped to recognise this compound form of oppression. Crenshaw used the metaphor of a traffic intersection: a woman injured at an intersection may have been hit by a car coming from multiple directions, but the legal system could only recognise one direction at a time.
In the context of literature, intersectionality means attending to the ways in which characters and writers experience the world not just as women but as women of a particular race, class, sexuality, and so on. It means refusing to treat gender in isolation from other forms of identity and recognising that the experience of a middle-class white woman may be very different from that of a working-class Black woman or an immigrant lesbian.
Intersectionality in Women’s Literature
Women writers have been exploring intersectional experience long before the term existed. Their work shows that gender cannot be understood in isolation from other dimensions of identity and that the most powerful literature often emerges from the intersection of multiple forms of marginalisation.
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851) is an early and powerful example of intersectional analysis. Truth, a formerly enslaved woman, challenged the white feminists who assumed that all women shared the same experience: “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?”
Truth’s argument anticipates the central insight of intersectionality: that the experience of womanhood is shaped by race and class, and that a feminism that speaks only for middle-class white women will inevitably exclude and misrepresent others. Her speech remains a powerful reminder that gender analysis must always be attentive to other dimensions of identity.
Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is a landmark of intersectional literature. Janie Crawford’s journey toward self-realisation is shaped not only by her gender but by her race, her class, and her sexuality. The novel explores how Black women experience both racism and sexism, and how their romantic and sexual desires are constrained by both. Janie’s famous declaration that she has “been a delegate to the big ‘ssociation of life” asserts her right to full humanity in the face of multiple forms of oppression.
Toni Morrison
Morrison’s entire career can be understood as an intersectional project. Her novels explore the experience of Black women with attention to the multiple forces that shape their lives: racism, sexism, class, history, community, and the legacy of slavery. Beloved is perhaps the most powerful American novel about the intersection of race, gender, and motherhood. The novel insists that Sethe’s experience as a mother cannot be separated from her experience as a Black woman under slavery. See the Toni Morrison guide and Beloved analysis.
Alice Walker
Walker’s concept of “womanism” is an intersectional framework. She argued that Black women’s experience could not be adequately addressed by mainstream feminism, which often ignored race, or by the civil rights movement, which often ignored gender. The Color Purple explores the interlocking oppressions of race, gender, and class that shape the lives of Black women in the early twentieth-century South. See the Alice Walker guide.
Intersectionality and the Canon
Intersectional approaches have transformed the literary canon. Writers who were marginalised because of their multiple identities — Black women, working-class women, lesbian women, disabled women — have been recovered and revalued. The canon has expanded to include voices that were previously excluded, and the ways in which we read canonical texts have been transformed.
Audre Lorde
Lorde’s work exemplifies intersectional thinking. She insisted on the inseparability of her identities as a Black woman, a lesbian, a mother, and a poet. Her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1984) is a powerful statement of intersectional politics, arguing that difference must be acknowledged and embraced rather than suppressed in the pursuit of unity.
Gloria Anzaldúa
Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) is another key intersectional text. Anzaldúa explored the experience of living at the intersection of multiple cultures, languages, and identities — Mexican, American, indigenous, lesbian, female. Her concept of “new mestiza consciousness” offered a model for embracing rather than denying hybrid identity.
The Origins of Intersectionality
Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 to describe the ways in which race and gender intersect in the experience of black women. Crenshaw argued that anti-discrimination law treated race and gender as separate categories, leaving black women without legal protection for the specific forms of discrimination they faced.
The concept has deep roots in black feminist thought. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” is an early articulation of intersectionality. The Combahee River Collective’s 1977 statement articulated a politics that recognised the interlocking nature of oppression.
Key Thinkers
Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought (1990) developed the concept of intersectionality within sociology. Audre Lorde’s essays explored the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class. bell hooks’s work analysed the ways in which systems of oppression reinforce one another.
Intersectionality in Literary Analysis
Intersectionality provides a framework for analysing how literature represents the experience of individuals who inhabit multiple marginalised identities. It allows critics to attend to the specific forms of oppression and resistance that shape those lives.
Intersectionality in Practice
Applying intersectionality to literary analysis involves attending to the specific ways in which systems of oppression interact in the lives of characters. A black woman character is not simply a woman who happens to be black; her experience of gender is shaped by race, and her experience of race is shaped by gender.
This approach has generated important readings of canonical texts. Toni Morrison’s Beloved, for example, has been read through an intersectional lens that attends to the specific ways in which Sethe’s experience is shaped by the intersection of race, gender, and motherhood.
Contemporary Applications
Intersectionality has become a central concept in contemporary literary studies. It has been applied to the analysis of literature from around the world, including postcolonial writing, diaspora literature, and transnational fiction.
The concept has also been critiqued. Some critics argue that intersectionality has become a form of academic jargon. Others argue that it has been taken up in ways that dilute its political edge.
Key Works in Intersectional Literary Analysis
Important works of intersectional literary analysis include Hazel Carby’s Reconstructing Womanhood (1987), which examines the representation of black women in nineteenth-century literature; and Valerie Smith’s Not Just Race, Not Just Gender (1998), which applies an intersectional approach to African American literature. These works have transformed the study of American literature. Intersectionality remains one of the most influential concepts in contemporary literary studies, shaping how scholars approach questions of identity, power, and representation across disciplines. Its application continues to generate rich new readings of both canonical and marginalized texts.
FAQ
What is intersectionality?
Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how different forms of identity and oppression — such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability — interact and overlap. It insists that these dimensions cannot be analysed in isolation.
Who coined the term “intersectionality”?
Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in 1989, though the ideas it describes have been present in women’s literature and feminist thought for much longer.
Why is intersectionality important in literary analysis?
Intersectionality allows critics to attend to the full complexity of identity and experience. It prevents the reduction of characters and writers to a single dimension and enables a more nuanced understanding of how power and marginalisation operate.
Which writers are central to intersectional literature?
Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Maxine Hong Kingston are among the writers whose work is centrally concerned with intersectional experience.
How has intersectionality changed literary studies?
Intersectionality has expanded the canon, transformed reading practices, and challenged the assumption that gender can be studied in isolation from other forms of identity. It has made literary studies more attentive to the complexity of human experience and more inclusive of voices that were previously marginalised.