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Intersectionality

Black American
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The overlapping of race, gender, class, sexuality, and other identities in lived experience.

Detailed Definition
Intersectionality helps explain why oppression is not experienced in only one dimension. African American poets use it to show how Black life is shaped by multiple forces at once, especially in poems about Black women, queer identity, labour, poverty, violence, family, and belonging.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem shows how race, gender, class, and sexuality shape one speaker’s life together; A Black woman’s labour is shown as both racial and gendered struggle; Intersectionality appears when no single category explains the poem’s injustice; A poet layers identity to show complex lived experience
Additional Notes
Intersectionality is essential for analysing African American poetry that addresses overlapping systems of oppression rather than single-axis identity alone. Originally associated with Black feminist thought, it helps explain how race interacts with gender, class, sexuality, disability, and other social forces. Students should use this concept when a poem resists simplified readings of oppression, especially where Black women’s or queer Black experiences reveal layered forms of exclusion and resistance.
Also Known As
Intersectional analysis
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