By Vinamarata “Winnie” Kaur

I see people around me,
Trying to define race as white or Black,
And I look at myself…
Lurking in between the color codes of what’s deemed “normal.”
I turn to feminism,
To find the Western mainstream feminist movement still plagued with racism and speciesism.
I feel like an insider-outsider.
I get asked, “What are you?”
Am I white, or am I Black?
“Maybe neither, or maybe both; it’s none of your business,” I say.
Who am I, and what social justice movement(s) should I turn to?
Will the Others ever learn to look beyond my Brown flesh
And channel their chakras away from my external appearances?

I see people around me,
Smoking and drinking their health and lives away.
They socialize in the ecstasy of hallucinating drugs
And take pride in the grilling of their steaks at summer BBQs while shaming vegetarians and vegans for not sharing their carnal pleasures.
And I look at myself…
A decolonizing, teetotalling, fat, hairy, vegan feminist secluded and excluded from those circles,
Isolated in the company of my books.
I turn to TV and films,
And they still ridicule me with their colorblind eyes and their body-shaming ads…
Who am I, if not the Other “Other” in this United-yet-divided land of opportunities?

With liminal spaces to call “home”
I continue to be oppressed
By the layered shackles of binarisms entrenched in white cis-male heteropatriarchy,
Without a recognizable identity of my own…
And whom the Department of Homeland Security once called a non-resident alien
And now calls a permanent resident,
Still stripped of that full status assigned to its human citizenry.
I carry with me the spirit of the Brown subaltern,
And a body fueled by plants,
Spreading the word that…
I am different and disidentified,
I am both vegan and a non-Western feminist,
And that’s OK.

I occupy the in-betweenness and the Brownness of this flesh- and color- obsessed society,
Not just because of my culinary choices or the invisible purdah I wear on my skin,
But because of my subjectivity and lived experiences.
What gives anyone then the privilege to exclude me from bounds of “normalcy,”
And to force me to classify myself as either white or Black / feminist or vegan?
I refuse to pass as one or the Other…
Because #BlackLivesMatter, #BrownLivesMatter, #TransLivesMatter, #IntersexLivesMatter, #NativeLivesMatter, and #NonHumanLivesMatter.
And whiteness, colonialism, and speciesism should not be allowed to define our relations to our marginalized bodies anymore;
I am an intersectional, Brown, South Asian vegan feminist,
For these are inherent parts of my multivalent identity
That I will continue fighting for,

Until my last breath.

Winnie was raised in a small city in northern India and is currently a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Her current research and teaching interests include South Asian studies, environmental literatures, critical animal studies, digital humanities, Sikh studies, queer thea/ologies, and feminisms in popular/counter cultures. She has always been passionate about social justice through expressivity and creativity.