"Were you Frida?"

A pretty young stranger at the next table pauses my exit with a question: "Were you Frida at the halloween party?" A city of 20 million plus and, clearly, not enough eyebrows. "No, but I get that a lot."

Was I Frida? Was I Frida on halloween? Was I Frida at a party? Prosthetic eyebrows? Plastic flowers? Failed Billie Holiday? Fitting disguise? Was I Frida at 16? Was I Frida yesterday? Halo of frizz? Mustache dust? Open chest? Was I Frida at 22? Bloody grin? Gritted teeth? Joyous rage? Radical rejectedness? Was I Frida? Pubic hair? Men's shirt? Cigarette? Was I Frida? Feckless heart? Reckless feet? Sharp bite? Slurred Speech? Was I Frida? Eyebrows met?

Every day, I thank 16-year-old me for her gumption and rebelliousness.

Libre

Remember, my dear,
Your brown body is also
A kind of passport.

Where?

"I'm interested in what Ondaatje calls the "international mongrels of the world," or what Rushdie calls the "international bastards," all those people with no place and yet every place inside them. The best line I ever heard along these lines was from John Berger. I met him in Paris. We were both a little over-served, shall we say, wine and vodka, and I asked him where he was from. He looked at me strangely, as we are friends and we'd been corresponding a long time, and he said, "England, of course." And I said in the most ridiculous way, "I know, I know, I know, but where are you from from?" He smiled that big smile of his, those eyes of his. He waited a long time and then he said that he was "a citizen—no, no, not a citizen—a patriot of elsewhere."

- Colum McCann, in a conversation with Nathan Englander published with Let The Great World Spin, which I just finished today and found intermittently fascinating and illuminating, but didn't wholly love. This bit intrigued me, though. It's not the puzzle piece so much as it is a tentative outline of the gap that needs to be filled, but it's something.

"It's hard for me because I'm..."

If you have multiple oppressed identities, which takes precedence? Which is the most crucial? Put more simply, if you're brown, foreign, and a girl, which should you complain about in order to get offered the most number of Kleenexes?

Any bets?

Be warned, however, that if you choose anything other than "girl", you will immediately be accosted by a vast army of highly compassionate, educated, and noble women who will explain to you that female oppression is the most devastating and pervasive ill of all. They'll also say that it is far and away the most important to fight, and that you should put aside all other, relatively trivial historical grudges to fight it. This, they will promise, will liberate you.

That's when you call Saba Mahmood and ask her if she'd like a drink.

She, I trust, will remind you that the world is divided along multiple intersecting lines, and that the elimination of one may not get rid of the rest. Then, I hope, she will suggest that you review the details of your subscription to Liberation Magazine. You may be signing up for things you weren't aware of, and paying more for them than you thought.

Because here's the thing: if you really want to emancipate yourself from whatever you feel is trapping you, you must do it on your own terms. What good is it being saved by someone else if you're merely transferred from danger to dependency?

Think about what happened the last time we were offered salvation in exchange for conversion.