Intersection, with Intention

 

Later this year I will have the pleasure of speaking to an Asian-American group on the Penn campus as part of a series of talks about the Asian experience in this country. I'm looking forward to telling stories about my life, and have tentatively decided to organize them under the theme of "intersection, with intention."

"Intersectional" is one of these buzzy terms that can mean a lot of things or nothing at all. For me, it is the notion that people are different, and that in those differences there are intersections whereby we can find common ground and seek shared advocacy. I will go further and say that this is not only a good thing but a foundational thing, at least for those of us privileged enough to have room in our lives to want to learn and grow and stretch and heal. Because we evolve and adapt as people when we are confronted with who we are, who others are, and how we can work through, appreciate, and benefit from ways in which we are different. It's one of the reasons I've really tried to prioritize reading biographies of lots of different kinds of people, because I find it so stretching to walk a mile in the shoes of someone very different from me.

But back to my talk on the Penn campus. Besides picking books to read, it occurs to me that there are lots of ways we can make intentional choices to create intersections with others different from us, and then to be "intersectional" from there. Tentatively, I will cover the following in my remarks:

* Where you choose to go to school and who you choose to make friends with once you're there

* What kind of job you look for, in terms of what the organization is about and who you'll work with

* Who you choose to marry and how you choose to bring kids into your family

* Where you choose to live and what social opportunities you plug into there

Here's a link to the event page. Hope to see you there!