Intersectional Microaggressions: Developing Resistance and Resilience of Transnational Queer Students Through Translingual Writing

This theoretical analysis centers on the groundwork of microaggressions and intersectionality leading to intersectional microaggressions, indicating that the population of transnational queer students inside and outside of the classrooms remains unknown. The transnational lens refuses the rigidity of bounded geographies while highlighting the multiple resources (e.g., language, gender, and race) these populations carry over. Situating transnational queer students potentially contributes to the disruption of heteronormativity and the crescendo of homophobia. Daily environmental, behavioral, and verbal microaggressions are involved with more than one identity discrimination (e.g., gender, race, and language) against transnational queer students leading to internalized microaggressions. This article pushes the boundary between intersectional microaggressions and internalized microaggressions further, suggesting that microaggressive discrimination exists between groups (others) and within-group (oneself) as internalized intersectional microaggressions. Drawing upon the theory of translingual writing, transnational queer students may allow for the cultivation of resistance and resilience for gendered/queer, racialized, and linguistic reconstruction in a heteronormative language and literacy education. In conclusion, this article implies that translingual writing potentially rewrites historical records while questioning linguicism (Standard English), heterosexism/genderism (heteronormative and heterosexual discourses), and racism (xenophobic and racial violence).