(The Spanish version of IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All. Review is of the English edition.) When a book on intersectionality has an introduction by Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term, you can assume it’s going to be good—and so this is. Through a series of rhymes, we meet a variety of children, all of whom read as female, with a variety of intersectional identities—and just as importantly, we learn of the connections among them and the support they give each other. The book manages to weave in race, gender, religion, class, physical ability, citizenship, and more without overburdening the straightforward text.
One of the children is a child named Kate who prefers a superhero cap to frills and bows, and whose friends support Kate’s using the bathroom with them. A Muslim girl in a hijab says that like Kate, her clothing, too, “inspires endless debate”—but clothes should never justify hatred. We also meet a girl whose wheelchair allows her to “zzzip glide and play”; during the day, her family takes care of another girl whose mom has to work. One girl uses her English language skills to help her Spanish-speaking mother at their family’s grocery store; another, born in Korea but growing up in the U.S., similarly helps her Korean-speaking mother navigate their new home. One child who is a refugee lives with the family from Korea. A Black child stands up to police, then helps another who is a Native American water protector. We see all the children at a march for social justice, where there are signs like “Black Lives Matter,” “Trans Lives Matter,” “Say Her Name,” “Love Wins,” and “Ally.” The book reminds us of the varied aspects of our selves that intersect to form our identities, and that “standing together, we’ll rewrite the norms.” Lovely and needed.
