From the Editors

Our goal for this issue, the first of three in Volume 4, has been to explore a varied few of the myriad ways that race and gender identities interact across the globe, to show some of the consequences that attach to those interactions, and to cast some explanatory light on those dynamics. We invited contributors to respond to a range of questions, including the following:

How do race and gender intersect to mediate access to social opportunity? What is the relationship between gender and racial discrimination? Is gender discrimination likely to be more severe in places where racial discrimination is also severe, or are the two largely independent phenomena? Why is that the case? By what means does the intersection of “women” and racial/ ethnic “other” as identities so often result in the creation of a subclass considered expendable and exploited? More generally, what are the consequences of discriminatory behaviors, institutions, and structures acting at the intersection of race and gender? What can be done?

As our classic piece we have chosen “Movimientos de rebeldía y las culturas que traicionan,” from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Here the author traces her personal experiences of being caught between two cultures, alienated from both. Anzuldúa’s meditation on identity intersections, expectations, decisions, and culture clashes is written in both English and Spanish. We reproduce the original piece, without translation. For those of us not proficient in both languages, reading the article provides both an intellectual challenge and a way to experience, however briefly, a culture with which we may not identify.

The centrality of visual representation is a common theme in many of the papers presented here. Several suggest that the body is one critical field on which race and gender play themselves out, including, not least, our perceptions of self when looking in the mirror and our awareness of how the body is marked or coded socially. Some artists, such as the Brazilian performer João Francisco dos Santos, whose life inspired the film Madam Sata and who is considered in this issue by Lorraine Leu, cross-dress or openly explore the racial “otherness” thrown into high relief by the dominant culture. This focus on the visual reminds us, if we need reminding, that both race and gender are often expressed through performance—routine daily performances; literal, staged performances; and even performance for audiences of one, the performer himself or herself.

Aino Rinhaug of the University of Oslo/University of London writes about the artistic aesthetic of Korean adoptees; this aesthetic is grounded in their status that defines them as a kind of perpetual immigrant as well as their permanent masking as people from an Asian society living in a Western culture. In “Adoptee Aesthetics: A Gendered Discourse,” the performance of the male body, the female body, the transgendered body, the Asian body—all on a Westernized stage—allows bodies to “generate identity.”

Our interview, “The Impact of Race and Gender,” is rich and varied thanks to the participation of several committed individuals who gave of their time and experience to answer our questions. We also recognize and thank our graduate research associate, Philip J. Kim, for his work in compiling and editing the responses.

Everyone has heard of the Lost Boys of Sudan, but what about the girls? Anne Harris, lecturer at the school of education at Victoria University, began an arts-based intercultural collaborative film project with Sudanese women, providing them with their own forum for speaking. The stories of Sudanese women differ from those of Sudanese men. The women have remained invisible due to Western as well as Sudanese cultural norms. They also struggle against preconceptions held by their teachers, preconceptions that mark them as incapable of performing or learning in the classroom. Harris explores these voices in “I Ain’t No Girl: Representation and Reconstruction of the ‘Found Girls’ of Sudan.”

In “Race, Gender, and Immigration in the Informal Economy,” Juhu Thukral, director of law and advocacy at The Opportunity Agenda, examines the realities of women workers of color in the U.S. information economy. Vulnerabilities are a very real concern for this segment...