Living in a multicultural society, we cross into each other’s worlds all the time. We live in each other’s pockets, occupy each other’s territories, live in close proximity and in intimacy with each other at home, in school, at work. We are mutually complicitous - us and them, white and colored, straight and queer, Christian and Jew, self and Other, oppressor and oppressed. We all of us find ourselves in the position of being simultaneously insider/outsider. The Spanish word “nosotras” means “us.” In theorizing insider/outsider I write the word with a slash between nos (us) and otras (others). Today the division between the majority of “us” and “them” is still intact. This country does not want to acknowledge its walls or limits, the places some people are stopped or stop themselves, the lines they aren’t allowed to cross. . . . [But] the future belongs to those who cultivate cultural sensitivities to differences and who use these abilities to forge a hybrid consciousness that transcends the “us” vs. “them” mentality and will carry us into a nosotras position bridging the extremes of our cultural realities.
