ABSTRACT
The image of an outsider is often represented by a rebellious White male causing trouble during the wee hours of the night, a James Dean “rebel without a cause”, character. The outsider is imagined to be the poor gang member, like the later incarnations of James Dean in the film “The Outsiders”, which imagines the outsider quality to be predominantly based on class. In the end, the lone outsider image is almost always portrayed as being from one gender and one culture. That caricature erases the reality of many other outsiders, many people who don’t fit within the parameters of their social norms, including women of color. What is more “outside” a Western, patriarchal culture than to be a woman of color? We can add infinite intersections that place that status even more outside the cultural center stage. I cannot remember not feeling like an outsider at any moment in my life and, throughout the years, I’ve found other Latinas who went through the same experience because they didn’t express their identities in ways that were acceptable in the Latinx community or in their larger social groups. I began to write about this experience in my late twenties, when I felt I could give voice to how it feels to be both part of and rejected from one’s social groups. Twenty years later, it has grown into a larger project.
