Keyword: Disability, Perception, Ocular Centrism, Visibility, Connection, First-person narrative, Radical Seld Love, Disability Justice
Abstract
This article explores different ways my intersectional identity as a disabled woman of color appearing white (due to Albinism) misinforms viewers in our ocular centric world. Through examples from my own lived experiences as an immigrant woman, artist, disability advocate and educator in New York, I will demonstrate how disability is a social, political, and cultural construct as outlined by Dr. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. I share how ignorance, indifference, lack of representation, and social or cultural barriers sequester individuals with disabilities, especially those who are multiply marginalized. Often the invisible parts of individual identities, their barriers, and even strengths are not accounted for. Through this personal exploration and unpacking, I present the unknown or un-noticed experiences for fostering healing, care, and connection in the broader disability community. Finally, this article sheds light on the many facets of having a disability that adds proverbial flavors and spice to our lives.
Introduction
As an Indian woman living in New York City with a disability, (which is not always evident), I find that people have all kinds of assumptions, impositions, and opinions about my appearance and my disabled identity. Most people who see me for the first time don't realize or identify me as an Indian (including people from India), at least until the time I talk. For me, it's a window into understanding how someone new, I meet will respond when they hear I am Indian. It has exposed how people feel about Indians, and consequently, me when they realize I am Indian. Due to the ocular-centric culture we live in, I question if people whom I meet occasionally can remind themselves of my identity as a woman of color, as I appear white, speak fluent English, and adorn fusion wear menaing I don’t always wear authentic Indian clothing. Generally, most people I meet have two categories they put Indians in, at least in America. One is the tech expert or the famous doctor they know, and the second is people coming from a country where all the people are still living in a caste system and poverty. Among the many cliches that people have about India and in general, about people who come from developing countries, the one that I am asked most about is my fluency in the English language. The assumption is that countries with other native languages don't speak English and therefore I must be an exception to the rule or must have had to work extra hard in America to learn English. I can only speak for my experience as an Indian and want to debunk the myth that I learned English especially to come to America. Another side of this experience I have is not being seen as an Indian at all due to my fluency in the language and my ability to articulate different cultural norms. Most of the time though my accent gives it away. While I also recognize that in several countries English is not used as frequently, my point here is to remind oneself to not assume or generalize the knowledge, expertise, or fluency of a subject or language based on where they are from. I would also like to acknowledge that the use of the same language varies from culture to culture, and its nuances are variable too. For example, the use of English in America is literally and figuratively very different from the use of English in Britain. Even though Britain colonized India and we still follow British English, we punctuate differently, we use different words that mean the same objects but may be identified differently in American English. For example, the word rubber in India is used to describe an eraser or an object that can erase pencil marks. The word rubber in America is generally used in reference to latex condoms. This cultural difference further adds to the complexity of being a non-native English speaker. I would argue though that even native English speakers from primarily English-speaking countries like Canada and Australia might also be encountering similar experiences.
English is India's official language and is the medium for education in the majority of public and private schools. Also, most Indians grow up learning in English medium schools meaning schools that resort to English-based texts and resources for education. However, when applying to universities across America and other primarily English-speaking countries, people from developing countries need to clear TOEFL, IELTS, or other English language proficiency tests that also require certain levels of scores. I would like to mention here that we in India don’t require such tests when people from the West like to come and learn yoga, or even Indian languages. Everyone is welcome! In his book ‘The Location of Culture’, Homi K Bhabha discusses the complexity of identities that are not static or one dimensional in a post-colonial state or even in their overlaps as people with multi-cultural identities. He talks about his interest and fascination with identity and his subject for research stems from his own disposition and also from his discovery or fascination with the Indo-Caribbean world of V. S. Naipaul’s fiction. He writes,
“What one expects to find at the very center of life or literature – the summation of a Great Tradition, a touchstone of Taste – may only be the dream of the deprived, or the illusion of the powerless. The canonical ‘center’ may, indeed, be most interesting for its elusiveness, most compelling as an enigma of authority. What was missing from the traditionalist world of English literary study, as I encountered it, was a rich and paradoxical engagement with the pertinence of what lay in an oblique or alien relation to the forces of centering. Writers who were off center; literary texts that had been passed by; themes and topics that had lain dormant or unread in great works of literature – these were the angles of vision and visibility that enchanted me.”
The point Bhabha makes here is that English as a language is only a medium of sharing ideas and learning the nuances of lived experiences or identities that are in between are what spar interest and fascination to him. I think this applies broadly to my point here about the supremacy of English language or one particular way of communicating, even though it is the experience, knowledge or even the perspective that adds substance to our learning, connection and conversations. Another important observation I would like to make here is that people regardless of their eloquence in English, in English-speaking countries are deemed as Native English speakers even though as we all know many of the English-speaking countries are also former colonies and that many other indigenous cultures exist in most English-speaking countries.
Often disabilities are thought to appear a certain way and when a disability identity collides with ethnicity it can create greater layers of complexity in perception. This is another important aspect of my experience that I would like to unpack. I have been using a cane for the past year now and it has revealed to me so much about my disability, but also the interplay of emotional experiences, and values levied on simple assistive devices and what it means to carry them around. As a cane user, I learned how I see and perceive my surroundings. My perception and posture literally changed as I found myself walking straight and with greater confidence. However, every now and then I have someone grab me thinking I don’t know where I am going, or even yell at me again assuming I don’t know what I am doing.
Although a cane greatly improves my mobility and navigation experience through the tactile and auditory clues it provides me, it comes with its own emotional baggage (part of which I suspect is also my own internalized ableism). The cane has deepened my interaction and relationship with the earth. It provides me with information such as how far I am from objects, how deep a crater in front of me is, or how much gap there is between the platform and the train door. The idea of the implicit knowledge that people around me expect me to be totally blind to be a cane user evokes a sense of shame and guilt because I am not totally blind. But again, my vision constantly fluctuates based on the light and its intensity in my surroundings. For example, when the skylight changes from cloudy to bright sunshine, the light of the sun is mirrored on my face, and I am suddenly blinded by the light and usually don’t see anything. Like albinism, there are other visual conditions that impact the way a person can perceive visuals in front of them depending on their perception of color, light, contrast, and brightness or glare. There are many variables that further contribute to how a person with Albinism and other low vision conditions might see such as low depth perception, low peripheral vision, nystagmus, astigmatism, color blindness, etc. It is of great importance that blindness and vision loss be seen as a spectrum rather than a black-and-white view of seeing. I find it utterly interesting that as I explain the ideas of seeing I am also compelled to use visual metaphors. Maybe the puns are intended here as I am talking about understanding the subconscious and paying attention to our biases and assumptions.
While my personal experience and feeling toward my cane is one of liberation and confidence, the emotional baggage makes it confusing and complicated to use the cane and not feel bothered by what people may presume. One of my strategies to combat this is to just not give a damn. This I am afraid takes practice, courage, and tenacity. The white cane has another stunning function apart from its mobility and obstacle detection function. It identifies me as disabled and for most people, blind. Personally, I feel comforted by this because when I crossroads or when I am blinded by light or lost in the street someone generally is more willing to help me without me having to elaborate on why I need help. It is ironic to me that while the devices like sunglasses, caps, umbrellas, and even binoculars are considered mundane accessories used by able-bodied people; accessories used by disabled people such as canes, wheelchairs, walkers, and hearing aids are greatly tabooed and have such deep stigma around them(Jan Wilson). Most people don’t realize that disability is not separate from them as Bess Williamson points out in her book Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design, all of us are just temporarily able-bodied, and we all are going to experience disability at some point in our lives. One of my students from my sensory design class reflected how we are often disabled by our physical environments such as loud restaurants or cafes where we find ourselves struggling to converse with each other. If we start reflecting and introspecting, we will even find idiosyncrasies in our behaviors like walking too fast, being a perfectionist, not having good time management skills, or not liking the flavor of nutritious foods, etc. These idiosyncrasies imperil our ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle or make our bodies deficient. Then why is it that we segregate disability and distance it so much? Is it okay for me to make a general statement that in some way or the other we are all ableist and biased?
A little while ago I visited a textile exhibition consisting of mostly Icelandic artists. Many of the people in the audience asked me if I had work displayed in the exhibition, some even spoke to me in the Icelandic language. I don't feel terrible that they assumed I was Icelandic, after all, I was noticed and not outcasted or ignored completely. I have short blonde hair, and I generally wear universal silhouettes with accessories that hint at my Indian identity. Of course, I love and wear Indian traditional wear too but not on an everyday basis. My dressing style reflects my love of colors, rich textures, and different kinds of textiles with jewelry and accessories that reflect my Indian upbringing such as nose rings and ear piercings. I am also very pale or white which I wonder is more common in Icelandic countries and why that might be. Something that I have realized recently is that people in, and from, different cultures tend to think about and react to my outer appearance differently. In my view, it generally coincides with the colonial history of the country, culture as well as the predominant value system and politics of identity of the region the person in question might be from. Connie Chu a multifaceted activist, singer, model, and writer having Albinism explains in her TED talk,
“When I was 7, we decided to move to Sweden. One of the reasons for moving to Sweden was well, you know, Connie would fit better with the blonde Swedish people. It didn’t quite work as planned because I was blonder than the blonde Swedish people. And I was still a Chinese girl. A White Chinese girl”.
This excerpt from her talk clearly illustrates how value systems and culture trump skin color. And yet skin color has been weaponized to make people feel superior or inferior within the context of their culture and value systems. In India even with Hindi being my native language, it’s hard for most people who don't know me to relate my fluency in the Hindi language, with my skin color. Even with persistent sentences in Hindi, people are caught off guard and before we could conclude our ongoing conversation, I find myself lodged in conversations about my skin color and how that came to be. The conversation generally leads to the person asking about how I got this condition in the first place and remarks that point to how beautiful or well-suited my appearance is despite the condition. Which to me is not a compliment because it implies that people with differences are not beautiful or can’t be beautiful. I have also been remarked on as being “an acquired taste”. So if you had any doubts about me being perceptibly beautiful, this would clarify it. I am not suggesting here that I don’t appreciate my beauty, but rather that my beauty is not universally understood as beauty. Nor is it the case for other people with albinism globally. Connie Chu shares compelling stories about her encounters with different people who view her beauty and assign it different meanings. She explains her encounter with an older gentleman in her church, who looked at her and not just stared at her in her face, and said she reminded him of an angel and her presence in the church further made him think of her as an angel. On the other end of this spectrum was a very hostile encounter she had at the Swedish airport. A man looking at her pass by commented to his friend that to him She looked F*****g ugly the entire time she was near his periphery in Swedish. When she purchased a bottle of water and remarked ‘thank you’ in Swedish to the cashier, he silenced himself. This example demonstrates how people with disabilities and visible differences are not perceived as neutral.
There is more to this than just the stereotype of the disabled look. The expectation to see disability as beautiful is just not prevalent in pop culture as seen in movies, popular media, and even our language. For example, phrases like ‘the blind leading the blind’ or ‘blindsided’ are used to convey notions of ignorance or unawareness(Godin). Movies like The Matrix or The DaVinci Code portray Albinos as evil and dangerous. Aside from popular culture perpetuating ideas of what a disabled person should look like, people with disabilities must find a way to protect our beauty and almost force it onto the world. I struggle with this and from what I have learned from other people with albinism, this is a common experience of albinism, but it also greatly varies on where you live and what kind of community you are surrounded by as well as the exposure people have around you. For about a decade of my adult life when I was in India, I succumbed to coloring my hair and eyebrows. I craved to be seen as an Indian woman, and I craved to find Indian beauty in its most literal form within myself. It took me a long time to understand that my Indian beauty resonates in my body in its purest essence. I can’t force it on myself in any other shape or form than my embodiment.
Sonya Renee Taylor, Co-Founder of the Institute of Radical Permission and an Award-Winning poet reads,
“the body is not Calamity the body is not
a math test the body is not a wrong
answer the body is not a failed class
you are not failing the body is not a
cavity, not a hole to be filled to be
yanked out not a broken thing to be
mended be tossed the body is not prison
is not sentenced to be served it's not
pavement it's not prayer do not give the
body as a gift only receive it as such the
body is not to be prayed for is to be
prayed to so for the ever more toratile
10th grade knows hallelujah”
Taylor further explains in an interview,
“Most of the way we think about the body is not an original thought. It's not a thing that we just wake up one day like, Oh my thighs are terrible right? I remind us that like the inception of your relationship with your body, this radical self-love is an inherent experience you arrive on the planet. We all arrived here this way so the question is not how do I learn to love myself, the question is what are all of the messages I have received throughout time that have separated me from my inherent knowledge of my own worthiness and love.”
Taylor poignantly explains that radical self-love is not just about learning to unlearn some of the harmful messages we receive from society through media, movies, and pop culture but it's about loving oneself in a way that can spark a greater change by loving others, be it their beauty in their physicality or notions of self-worth.
The beauty standards and the spectrum through which beauty is viewed in India can vary. There is a culture of promoting lighter skin in the beauty and film industry in India. One could argue that it is an indication of the remanence and prevalence of white supremacy and colonialism. So much so that there are fairness creams for men and women being freely advertised and sold that proclaim you would have visibly fairer skin in 4 weeks. Then of course these beauty standards are also demands of the patriarchal society. Women in India are often subject to discrimination based on their skin color when looking for suitable matches in matrimony. I of course am no exception to this discrimination even though I am visibly fair. My disability outweighs my fairness in the hierarchy of desirable attributes conventionally valued for Indian matrimony.
The other dark side of the politics of skin color I have experienced is this notion many of my friends and family members have shared with me. Often, I am told I would blend well in Western countries where there are whiter or more light-skinned people. Also, these remarks are made to support my disability advocacy work and the outrightness I have within this work. Well, I hate to shake this belief as it's not the case. I stand out just as much to light-skinned or Caucasian people too because I was raised Indian and my thought process, my use of the English language, and my eating habits are all just like any other Indian who was raised in a middle-class family in an urban city in India. Despite this reality, many might not understand the complexity and politics of the identity of people with albinism which makes us prone to being misunderstood. Connie Chu too explores these ideas in her talk of how her beauty is seen as an asset in fashion. But she often faces many different kinds of micro-aggressions like being told that she is only in fashion because of her light skin and blond hair. She also highlights how her identity as an Asian woman can not be erased. Why is it that despite our craving for connection we want to group or categorize people by their appearance? Is it so hard to relate to people without the urge to also look or appear like them? As Taylor discusses our radical self-love can help us erase these messages of self-hatred and thus help us accept different forms of beauty.
I must admit I have felt most comfortable within my blind and disabled community. Not only do the blind not comment or judge me by my appearance but also, I never have to strain myself and make eye contact. Making eye contact for me is awful and extremely painful due to nystagmus or constant involuntary eye movements. Several people have told me they don’t see my nystagmus, some openly stare into my eyes while I am looking at them and some just continue to make eye contact. None of these scenarios are desirable to me but as a person, who was mostly raised like a sighted person I understand the need for it but am never comfortable with it. I am always highly self-conscious when someone is making eye contact with me and internally hope they won’t judge me if I look away or look down or close my eyes to rest them. Many people perceive you as a shy, rude, or timid person if you don’t make eye contact in professional settings. This is one of the hardest things I have to contend with as an educator and I try my best to just be as communicative and professional as possible.
My time within the blind community is also when I feel I truly can be my whole Indian self as my voice is my identity with the blind. Moreover, I love that there is a space where the nuances of visual cues simply don’t matter. It’s refreshing to be in these spaces and truly liberating. The experience of being with my blind friends gave me insights into the shortfalls of visual culture and how disability and its experience can illuminate our lives through a different lived experience. The blind community has taught me that it is possible to form deeper relationships and move away from the illusions of visual perceptions so deep-seated in colonial history. I am also most stimulated to produce new experiences of art through the insights I learn from my blind peers. For example, my good friend Cynthia Benett who is a researcher and scholar in AI, is also a collector of tactile art. Each time she engages with my work she teaches me more about my understanding of touch and tactile perception. She understands my medium solely through touch in the absence of a textile background and can identify the difference in fiber qualities through the memory she has built of experiencing the fibers physically. This would be impossible for a person with only visual experience for my work because I create my own blended fabrics through felting and other textile processes. By responding to the materiality and its tactility, Cyndi illuminated the spark to create more complex blends of fibers through my felting technique. She has also really responded to my pieces which are highly pronounced in their form and texture. As an artist and designer, this has been a stimulating prompt for me to produce or generate new shapes and forms that are versatile in their texture and form.
Another profound experience I have had is with my blind friend and colleague Krishna Washburn who is a blind ballet dance teacher, accessory maker, and crocheter. Krishna teaches what she calls ‘Dark Room Ballet’ to the blind, low vision, and sighted communities virtually and free of cost based on an honor system for receiving payment for her work. For years I have struggled to learn crochet because all the different ways that people taught me crochet were visually driven. Krishna, whom I have only known for a year, invited me to her space with social distancing, and masks, as she is immune compromised, and guided me to learn crochet through her masterful craft of audio descriptions. Of course, all I needed was to understand the building blocks for crocheting because I am naturally an explorer. Her descriptions were so profound not just in the actual process of learning the technique but more than that in my understanding at a deeper level of how audio descriptions create access. And the social component of it is also the absolute validation I felt in knowing that it was not me who was deficient, but the methods of learning this seemingly visual technique were deficient. I have been a crochet addict ever since and have been integrating the technique in my pieces in creative ways, I have also been teaching crochet to sighted students. To me, this also exemplifies the myriad ways in which the blind truly lead the blind as well as the sighted. It also further demonstrates that there is so much more to know about every individual and what they can or can not do or be, than what our sight or our initial inkling informs us.
My journey in art and design further demonstrates the visibility and invisibility of my disabled identity. I have always had an itch for making and creating art from the time I remember having consciousness. My Indian heritage and exposure to crafts started with my interactions with my grandma. My paternal and maternal grandma both knew how to knit, sew, and crochet. My sister too learned to sew from my grandma. I watched my mother who was a kindergarten teacher paint large murals for her classroom, I was exposed to street vendors selling doilies and handmade objects, and craft bazaars (festivals/carnivals) as I was growing up. Although these objects and my grandma’s attempts to teach me how to knit brought excitement to me, I felt ill-equipped and unsure of being able to learn these techniques. In retrospect, I know that the tools my grandma would use were just not accessible to me for learning and the idea that I could produce anything valuable to sell was just unfathomable to me. Part of this is the rich history of fine and intricate textiles my country is known for.
When I was in my undergraduate program at the prestigious National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, I constantly received messages about my incapacity almost every step of my journey both literally and figuratively. I still vividly remember my intake process at NID. I had to be in studio tests that were not accessible including the materials I was given, the time I was given, and not even the project sheets were legible to me. When I requested accommodations stating my condition which is also hyper visible, I was asked to provide more proof and documentation beyond my medical examinations. Even after all the recommendations and documentation when I was called for an interview, I was asked blatantly “How would you draw from observation or complete certain tasks?” The campus was a death trap with brick steps that were not labeled, surfaces not marked, and sharp tools that I had never trained to use before, nor received any guidance to use. Despite these experiences, I loved the world of art and design and wanted to try and make an effort to learn.
I had a professor whose name was Immanuel Suresh. He was a professor in the graphic design department, a dark-skinned man with a heavier build and average height. He always looked at me with kindness and offered me his time generously. I shared many moments of joy, frustration, and hopelessness with him. But his role in my life was not merely of a listener. He planted a seed of a new way to think about design. He told me to design my own tools if the tools I had to use were not working for me. He said to me you don’t have to draw perspective with precision, you should draw blobs if that’s what you see. If your lines are jagged, then show them off!
This idea of designing my own process and shutting out the noise of incompetence around me is what helped me get through and to some extent thrive in my undergraduate textile design education. Of course, I was discouraged by my peers and my teachers for the most part. One of my roommates advised me not to pursue textiles because I could not thread the needle. You might think that this kind of ableism doesn't exist in our modern design institutions but very recently a colleague of mine seconded this remark and posed this question to me at a dinner party. Even though this colleague is familiar with my work and my story she believes that my knowledge is not good enough and that I am better suited for some other field.
The disability justice movement started by queer, disabled people of color like Mia Mingus, Stacey Milberne, Eli Clare, and many others has taught me that my experience and my knowledge are valid. That no matter how much someone tries to shut me up or shut me down, my body and its politics will prevail. I must share with you that most of this knowledge I have acquired through my own outreach, research, and relationship-building in the disability community. And while I dabble between the visibility and invisibility of my cultural, disabled, and beauty identities, I find healing, relief, and expression through my sensory textiles. Through my journey as a graduate student at Savannah College of Art and Design(SCAD), Savannah, Georgia, I found a way to manifest my vision for using my strengths that lie in my senses of touch and sound. I created a large body of work that I continue to grow. I make textiles and wearables using all kinds of naturally pigmented fibers that represent all skin tones and hair colors of albinism. My textiles and wearable pieces are tactile and multi-sensory and they encourage audiences to engage with them through their strongest senses. I borrowed from philosophies of Phenomenology of perception that center the body as a vehicle of meaning-making and a more holistic perception of the world by centering the body as a vehicle to perceive and make sense of our surroundings. While making my pieces and refining my technical prowess I had to make an effort to practice, make multiple variations of swatches to refine my ideas, find tools that were accessible like large eye needles, chunky yarns, large-size needles, and feeling for the heddles and the reed in a loom to thread it efficiently. I also constantly connected with disabled people in my surroundings such as The Savannah Center for the Blind and Low Vision in Savannah and now The Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Library in NYC. My learning process has never stopped and t is one of the ways I create access in education for myself. I always reach out and persist for help from individuals who are willing to work with the seeming imperfections of my body.
My interactions with other people with disabilities, especially blindness and low vision have been a consistent part of my life, though I haven’t had opportunities to develop friendships or communities as I have more recently. My elder sister(10 years older to me) also has albinism but navigates the world quite differently both visually and philosophically. Back in high school I also started learning how to play the violin based on Indian classical music. I would say this was the first interaction I had with a blind teacher. His name is Dr. Suresh Sharma. Until my heightened awareness and acknowledgment of my own blindness, I never really thought of him as blind. To me, he was my music teacher who was knowledgeable, warm, and full of humor. He taught me how to feel the differences in notes or ‘swar’ in music by touching the strings at different points with varying pressures. He taught me how to listen to different notes and follow a rhythm. We never needed to have a conversation about our respective blindnesses. I now know that it is because we share varying levels of embodied knowledge of touch and sound. I never thought about how he traveled to see me and teach me violin until I got to grad school and gained a deeper awareness of disability justice through my research and my work in sensory textiles. I am just trying to point out that even though I am disabled and have an intersectional identity, it was not until I had exposure to learn about critical disability theory and other opportunities for growth in education that I could possibly identify ableism as my own teacher might have had to face or I might encounter in future. I remember though that at the time I was just beginning my music lessons around the 2000s, he used to wear a talking watch and he commuted by a three-wheeler or auto.
An auto is an open vehicle with three wheels. One in the front of the vehicle and two at the back. It is a bright yellow and green in color. The top of the vehicle is upholstered with pleather-like material, and the bottom is probably of aluminum or some mixtures of metals. It is a partially open vehicle as it doesn’t have doors on either side of the passenger or driver seat. Autos are still a widely used mode of transport for middle-class populations in India. They are relatively cheaper than a taxi, fast, and can seat about 3 to four individuals along with the driver (the number of people sitting in an auto greatly depends on the creativity and flexibility of the auto-driver who sometimes shares his seat with a male identifying passenger). Like most modes of transportation, an auto also requires visual cues to get into such as waiving or making a gesture with your hand. I was quite surprised that hailing a cab in NYC is almost the same process as hailing an auto in New Delhi. In my initial days in NYC, I had to just open the doors of the yellow cabs to be able to see if there was a passenger inside. This had all kinds of hysterical moments for me as I would never know what I could find inside when I opened a cab door, and of course, I would get yelled at.
My music teacher was far more evolved and resourceful, he had made arrangements with some auto drivers who knew where to pick him from, when, and where to drop him off. Often when I hear people soliciting unwanted help for me or my blind friends, I think about the ableism persisting in society, and to me it's down to the fact that people really don't take the time to get to know others. They just want to feel good about themselves and helping people they assume are helpless is a way to feel good. Unfortunately, this puts more pressure on people with disabilities to thank people and feel obliged rather than feel like an equal citizen going about their day and doing their business in the world.
I am a person eager to connect with others who I share similar wavelengths and interests with. One of the ways I find connections and build understanding is by asking questions. I have learned the hard way though that questions are not always received with an understanding of curiosity in the West, but rather as intrusiveness and even rudeness. Welded with my skin color and its nuances, I probably give the wrong impression. The invisibility of my color, ethnicity, and disability then would be the worst combination to build a connection in the disability or the able-bodied communities as I don’t visibly belong in either. From where I come from asking questions seems like a healthier choice than making assumptions because my appearance is far from who I am literally and figuratively, but my continued need to build community and belonging has taught me to reflect, articulate, and learn more thoughtful ways of reaching out and communicating.
Conclusion
This is not a doom and gloom situation, and I am not trying to suggest that I am hopeless. Rather, my invisibility and visibility together inform me. I tread both worlds in ways that correspond to the edges of the two worlds I live in. One is a world where I emotionally and culturally belong through my upbringing but now have outgrown in inexplicable ways, the other is a world where I am foreign, but I am finding microcosms where I can belong if I persist. I am referring to the intangible space that is omnipresent wherever we live. My reflections, introspections, and deepened understanding through curiosity are leading me to the spaces which give me hope and freedom to possibly be able to just be me. I also think there is something beautiful about being on the precipice of both the visible and unseen worlds, you can be the bridge between these worlds, showing the invisible parts of a world with infinite possibilities beyond what can be seen through the naked eye. In other words, the over emphasis on sight and visual culture has prevented us from seeing the totality of experiences and bodies. When we really try and identify and learn about different lived experiences and learn from them with care built into our systems, we can start to see the potential of each body and each experience from its wholeness.
Bibliography
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