Herculean task: Pulling me apart

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Michelle Rogers 

Dr. Jaleesa Harris 

ENGL 2017-64187 

April 21, 2025 

Herculean task: Pulling me apart 

 My visual project is a digital art piece representing the struggle intersectionality causes for Black Queer women. I wanted the piece to convey the conflicting balancing act black women and queer black women go through and strength they have had to have to percivere. 

The art shows a black woman in a weightlifting position called the Hercules hold. The woman is fractured and has two additional silhouettes grabbing the pillars on each side. Figure leaning left has curly natural hair, hoop earrings, and traditional makeup. The middle figure has a pillar behind her tied to her braids. The figure leaning right has straight hair, stud earrings, and plain makeup. Each pillar has a flag hanging from it: to the left, the black power fist on the African American tricolor, to the right, the Venus symbol on a field of pink, and in the middle, the inclusivity pride flag. Two hands are trying to pull the pillars down from opposite sides. 

Jenefer Nash’s Practicing Love describes intersectionality as present-oriented.  “Intersectionality relies on attachment–perhaps even a cruel attachment– to the present” (Nash18). To represent that, I used a weightlifting pose, just as weightlifting takes all of your attention and is something you can not do forever, as is intersectionality politics. I also wanted the idea of intra-group marginalization to come across. The article Intersectional Activism describes intra-marginalization as “when this isolation happens within a social group as more privileged group members downgrade and distance themselves from less privileged group

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members” (Shaheed et al 5). That is what I wanted the hands to represent with black queer women trying to be strong and keep the status quo.

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Works Cited 

Nash, Jennifer C. “Practicing love: Black feminism, love-politics, and Post-Intersectionality.” Meridians, vol. 11, no. 2, 1 Mar. 2013, pp. 1–24, https://doi.org/10.2979/meridians.11.2.1. 

Shaheed, Janae, et al. “Intersectional activism among Black Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning young adults: The roles of intragroup marginalization, identity, and community.” Journal of Black Psychology, vol. 48, no. 3–4, 16 Feb. 2022, pp. 360–391, https://doi.org/10.1177/00957984211069058.

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