Intersectional Intentities in “Snapdragon”

While singled out for its queer representation, by portraying an economically disadvantaged & racially-diverse backdrop, #Snapdragon presents a world in which subject positions aren’t defined by a singular trait and thus an intersectional understanding of social difference. 1/10

Audre Lord, a pioneering intersectional feminist, and a queer black woman herself, once stated that, “I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.” 2/10

This eclipsing is a widely evident property of a great many works aimed at exploring representation – one subject position at a time. This is especially true of children’s literature, which often seeks to essentialize representational issues for didactic purposes. 3/10

Even outside of children’s literature, economic class has been underconsidered within queer studies. Scholar Susan Mann goes so far as to call it an“invisible ghost” in queer studies, which often fail to account for the role of wealth in the negotiation of queer sexualities. 4/10

Snapdragon, however, is set in a world where multiple minority subject positions exist simultaneously, in a complex series of intersecting influences. This leads to a blurring of lines in the story, and to characters built from diverse experiences of sameness and difference. 5/10

This intersectionality can also create some transference across metaphors, such as how Jacks lives on the outskirts of town in a dilapidated shed harvesting roadkill. That exiled existence, however, speaks to Jacks’s sexuality and gender-identity in meaningful ways. 6/10

At the same time, Jacks’s roadkill business (coded as a practice of lower socio-economic status) likewise contributes meaning to her representation as a queer woman through the later-revealed witchcraft aspect of it and discursive associations between such and lesbianism. 7/10

Similarly, the romance at the core of the story between Jacks & Jessamine is both an interracial affair as well as a WLW relationship. Even Jacks’s mentorship of Snap can seen to operate across socially-enforced racial boundaries despite shared economic status. 8/10

Similarly, the accepting nature of Snap’s entire extended family might speak to their experience of Blackness in rural America and its historic associations with economic disadvantages, including cascading impacts into the importance of family acceptance. 9/10

Thus, as much as Snapdragon is lauded for queer representation, as our understanding of it progresses, we must likewise consider the complex matrices of identity positions that are portrayed within the narrative and the many complex ways by which those positions collide. 10/10