Tessa Mcwatt Quotes

Similar to writing, the story of the self is true in each particular telling. We change, the story unfolds and changes, but the telling itself is eternal.

These stories relieve me of the pain of belonging nowhere and give me the key to everywhere. As I once longed for a singular place, a singular ethnicity or plot of land over generations, I now long for its opposite, for a space beyond belonging. I have travelled to many places in order to scope a sense of ownership or repatriation, but as I try to square my politics with my privilege, it seems that my only true inheritance is that I am always running somewhere else.

I recognized that the racialized liberalism in which I was educated--where we strive for a bigger part of some mythological pie that our fractured identities are in competition for--leaves us without a language with which to talk about inequality. It leaves black and white in perpetual opposition, a state that feeds the plantation mentality.

Identifying as a woman of colour has been crucial in my understanding of structural politics in society. But this focus hasn't changed the plantation structure, the violence against black bodies and women's bodies. When we stake our primary claim on a racial identity, that identity can be used against us, to keep us in our category, to keep us divided. When we are so divided, it appears that it is impossible to address inequality, because it looks as though we're calling for "sameness" not equality. Which is, of course, not what we want at all.