ABSTRACT
I often have used the construct of “bleeding borders” or “bleeding identities” to reference the false boundaries that limit social possibility-whether that be the migration of identities across place and space, or the limitations of what we are supposed to be, based on the materiality of bodies, the presumed fixity of sex and gender, or the historical points of origin that
signal cultural and clan affiliation (see for example Alexander, 2011). I have argued that the notion of “bleeding” is not necessarily a violent metaphor, as much as the travel between permeable membranes of bordered identities within an embodied text-often when inter/intra-cultural-racial encounters force a realization of the predicament of selves. Such a construction in my engagement of a critical autoethnography also reveals the intersectional nature of identity.
