"My Body, Their Choice": An Auto-Ethnography of Size, Gender, and Race

• In Event: 47.097 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Eight - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 47.097-7 - Out of the Box: Performance and Arts-Based Approaches in Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

After being introduced to the area of embodiment studies, I have found myself growing and changing by living in a body that gets the opportunity to be perceived differently by myself and others. This paper is about the intersections of my lived and embodied experiences as an Iranian woman, in a brown fat woman’s body. I'm talking, writing, drawing, and theorizing about "the physical realities of {my} life-{my} skin color, the land or concrete {I} grew up on, {my} sexual longings- all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity" (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981, 23).
Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (1981). This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color (1st ed.). Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press.

Author

• Bahar Haghighat, Memorial University of Newfoundland