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What Lies Between Us: Intersectionality For centuries, identity has often been thought of as a group of distinctive characteristics that are independent such as sex, gender, race, class, and sexuality. White privileged Americans have been key supporters to the idea that a person’s identity or ability corresponds with a person’s race. In Nayomi Munaweera’s novel, What Lies Between Us, the main character, Ganga a girl from Sri Lanka, has been amongst the social and cultural construction of intersectionality. Based on intersectionality, the five main categories that best identify with the main character in the book are: race, sexuality, gender, culture, and education. In What Lies Between Us, Munaweera’s book demonstrates how her work is significant based on her interpretation of intersectionality and some of the main classifications. The examples I use from Munaweera’s novel will illustrate and focus on the main concepts of intersectionality and show how intersectionality intersects to form a persons’s identity. By the end of the essay, I hope to give a clear perception on how intersectionality has been incorporated in ways which discrimination and privilege integrate individually and systematically. In the novel, the main character can identify with the social construction of education, the purpose of higher education is socially constructed to create a competition in the world, and create separation of social status. For instance, Ganga’s father had a great education versus the little education her mother received. Ganga’s father was able to afford to put himself through college and became a professor. Ganga’s mother wasn’t able to go to attend college because she didn’t grow up in a wealthy family. Ganga attended school in her country, but when she moved to America she had more opportunities to further her education that she might of not had back in Sri Lanka. It was important to Ganga to have a higher education than her mother, because she

knew it would make her mother happy. When Ganga finished school she worked as a nurse and was able to support herself without any help. One of the goals of having a higher education is to be financially secure and to also have a stable life. If Ganga never moved to America she would probably end up like her mother. She would be married with children while her husband goes to work to support the family. Munaweera states, “If we stayed in Sri Lanka, there would be a hundred voices a day reminding me to find someone, to get married and settle down” (155). This example supports that Ganga understood the importance and privilege it was to have the chance to receive an education, and she knew how tough the world would be if she didn’t have a career. Ganga wanted to be financially independent first, so that later when she got married she didn’t have to rely on someone to support her financially. The next main category of intersectionality is race, which is an example of someone who may experience discrimination or disadvantages due to their ethnicity. For instance, Ganga took her daughter to the park in an area where wealthy white people take their children. She felt that the lady that was trying to talk to her was judging her because the lady must of thought Ganga left her own kids to look after an American baby. Munaweera narrates, “It is an old role she has found for me, the children of this country for so long brought up by women with dark skin, black skin” (253). This is an example of discrimination against her ethnicity. The lady immediately assumed Ganga was Mexican and was the nanny, because typically wealthy white people have Mexican women as their kids nanny. Ganga felt that the lady instantly had an opinion that it would be somehow impossible to have an American looking child because she was dark skinned. Munaweera writing about this scenario is an example that discrimination can or will happen anywhere it doesn’t matter if it’s at a park or work place. The is just one instance out of the novel

that Munaweera narrates. Ganga experiences racism even while she was with her husband when they went to stay at hotel in Utah. The lady at the desk refused to look at Ganga when talking and she would only make eye contact with Ganga’s husband. It’s unbelievable that Ganga has experienced discrimination and racism more than once in her life. In Nayomi Munaweera's novel, What Lies Between Us, the main character, Ganga went through difficulties regarding her sexuality. After she experienced sexual relations with one of her closet female cousins. It was clear that she was sexually attracted to her cousin or vice versa. Both Ganga and Dharshi were in a vulnerable place at the time, and the author was sure to narrate that in the her book. Dharshi was dealing with a lot of emotions because she was about to get married. Ganga was still dealing with the trauma she experienced from a her childhood and moving to America. After Ganga finds out her cousin is getting married Munaweera writes, “ I throw myself back into school, try to forget the whole thing. Mostly I do, but in my dreams I see Dharshi’s beautiful face and some other unknown one next to it. A frog, not transforming into a prince but shape-shifting into something frightening (138). This was written before Ganga went to see her cousin one last time before her cousins wedding. The sexual relationship between Ganga and her cousin only happened once, but if it weren’t for Dharshi getting married their sexual relationship might of kept occurring. The traumatic experience Ganga went through as a young girl might have contributed to the difficulties she had with her sexuality. For her to go through the sexual abuse she went through with her father did have major affect on Ganga in her adult life. Eventually, Ganga and Dharshi both got married and had kids. Dharshi life seemed well put together, and Ganga’s life seemed to be on a constant downward spiral. This example focuses on the one of struggles Ganga experienced with her sexuality.

Continuing with the main categories, culture is another important part of intersectionality. In the small country Ganga grew up in she was surrounded by Sinhalese people and everyone one knew each other. Munaweera narrates, “On the island we were fixed in place from birth. We knew where we fit. You were this person’s older sister, that person’s second cousin on the father’s side, that one’s oldest cousin. Names would tell you everything about a person’s placement in the complex familial and community matrix” (98). The way of life in Sri Lanka is very typical the father is the provider and the mom stays home with the children. That was the path that Ganga was expected to follow. She was suppose to have an arranged marriage, have kids, and stay at home with the kids while her husband worked. When Ganga’s father died her mother wasn’t so strict on her culture norms and values. Her mother still put a lot of pressure on Ganga to get married and have children, but she wasn’t fixated on all of the cultural rules she had to follow when she was married to Ganga’s father. When Ganga and her mother moved to America the cultural dynamic was completely different and they both had to overcome some difficulties along the way to adjust and make themselves comfortable. In society culture is needed it’s dependent on the social construction and it can’t exist without it. In the novel Munaweera proves culture is continuously changing and the cultural norms or values Ganga’s mother followed won’t necessarily be the same Ganga will follow. The last main category of intersectionality I’m going to cover is gender, which is an example of someone who may experience discrimination or disadvantages due to their race and gender. In What Lies Between Us, I don’t recall a specific time where Ganga received disadvantages due to her being a dark colored woman. What Ganga experienced was always separate she dealt with racism in life, but she never mentioned if she dealt with it in a work

environment. The same with her gender, in the novel Munaweera doesn’t narrate that she experienced disadvantages because she was a woman. There was an instance when a black coworker of Ganga’s was driving at night with her white husband and the officer pulled them over at a DUI stop. The officer flashed the light in the wife’s eyes and asked what her relationship was to the driver. He asked a serious of question because the officer thought she might of been a prostitute. Munaweera writes, “It was only proof of their shared name, their matched rings, that convinced him and freed them to go. Always between this couple, the way officer’s eyes had misread love for commerce (173). This example shows how Ganga’s friend experienced discrimination because she was black a woman. In summary, Munaweera was able to demonstrate the five main classifications relating to intersectionality. Through these examples, Munaweera was able to incorporate what race, sex, gender, sexuality, and education meant to her, but also gave a realistic view of what goes on in order to construct society. She was able to narrate Ganga’s story and include what she experienced in her life regarding sexism and racism. Each component of intersectionality has to do with the person as an individual, but the main goal is to show how intersectionality intersects to form a persons’s identity. Throughout the book there are certain scenarios and circumstances dealing with disadvantages in Ganga’s life. There were also many great moments and opportunities in her life as well. She worked hard to make a better life for herself, but her past always got the best of her. The most important thing to take away is that race intersects with many important components of intersectionality like sex, class, gender, and sexuality to name a few. That’s what forms an individuals identity not race alone.

Works Cited Munaweera, Nayomi. What Lies between Us: a Novel. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017. Print.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2006. PDF....