Chapter 5: Confessions of a Transplanted Mind: “Second Street” Stories of Transgressing, Transforming, and Integrating

We, in the West, are living in an era in which identity politics have launched an ever-growing number of social movements. Stories of self-determination dominate our news cycles and newsfeeds. Those of us who are aware of our privilege are scrambling to prove ourselves worthy allies, and to signal aspects of our life stories that distance us from the colonizers, the racists, and the misogynists. We do this so that we can claim, however tenuously, some sensitivity or personal experience with respect to being disadvantaged. The reality, of course, is that none of us is singularly victim or oppressor. Intersectionality theory explains that our identities comprise all our different social locations, with one/some being more salient within a specific power structure. As Hankivsky (2014) explained, “Human lives cannot be explained by taking into account single categories, such as gender, race, and socio-economic status. People’s lives are multi-dimensional and complex” (p. 3).