Rupi Kaur Quotes

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members but often fail to represent them.

SXSW can feel very male, very straight, and very white, and though it's a great festival, when you have a film that's different, it's hard to find your place.

You must make sure that the majority of the people are not marginalized.

I always prided myself on being apart from the ruling class. I think it's always important, not just in Washington but in life, to be able to able to balance your sense of belonging with what it's like to be someone who doesn't belong.

I'm a white, middle-class male who had a happy childhood in Ohio. The world does not need me to be a novelist.

Lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small.

As you would expect when individualism is based only on opportunity, no one asks what happens to those who have neither the financial nor the political clout to exercise their tiny portion of that opportunity.

The mayor’s administration and staff is like the Rocky Mountains. There higher up it gets, the whiter it gets.

Disability, in general, hasn't been included in the conversation about inclusivity.

This idea of feminism as a party to which only a select few people get to come - this is why so many women, particularly women of colour, feel alienated from mainstream western academic feminism. Because don't we want it to be mainstream?

All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record.

There are people who get to be three-dimensional humans in the United States, and there are people who do not.

Just speaking for myself, when I'm complimented for being Vietnamese-American in television - the only one - that doesn't make me feel happy, that makes me feel really lonely, actually.

If I waited to write only for a Persian lesbian, I'd still be waiting. But I can write for straight white men because those are the jobs.

I grew up in musicals, and if you looked like me and sounded like me, you were the character; you were never at the center of the story.

I think the biggest thing is voice. Whose voice is it? Who gets to control the narrative?

There's a burden of responsibility for me to show up correct - in my head, if I don't do it right, then I'll get shut out, and then other trans women of color will be shut out.

Only a straight white person would have no concept of what visibility is. They've never contended with anything but visibility.

If you never, or rarely, see your experience depicted in art or pop culture then you can begin to feel isolated or separate; Othered. So, representation is super important.

I spent 12 years of my life writing stories without black people. That's insane to me. It's insane that I could have believed in magical portals and dragons and all that stuff, but to believe a black person could be experiencing those things was unimaginable.

I knew nothing of American History because I didn't pay attention to American History in school. Because I did not see myself in American History in school.

I kind of understood inherently - and I wasn't really conflicted about this - that comics were not for me or by people who looked like me. That was just something that I accepted about the world.

I don't want a middle-aged white man telling me how to write my feelings. It's not gonna work for me.

If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu.