Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Linda KarellBenton, Sonja Annalise2018-12-052018-12-052018https://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/14608This, more than anything, is a retelling of a story. It is a retelling of being an activist, a cancer victim, a writer, a student, a teacher, and an American. It is a new mythology of the classroom, the university, of the creation of language. I draw on Gloria Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde, and countless others, to guide a new conception of how to move in the world, how to become, and how to rewrite the myths that have been told about us. I hoped to create an answer and precedent for my own experience and shed new light on the work of 80s intersectional feminists as a guide for activism in the 2010s and 2020s to come. Its success as a paper depends on those who do work in the future, on the guidance it manages or doesn't manage to provide to others. I will never know how this work concludes, since it is just a continuation of previous work meant to help fork into new continuations in the future. It is the drawing of a map that was already partially drawn, and that is nowhere near finished yet. It is a call for more people willing to draw.enLorde, Audre.--Criticism and interpretationAnzaldúa, Gloria.--Criticism and interpretationIdentity (Psychology)Social advocacyDiscriminationLanguage and languagesHistoryThesisCopyright 2018 by Sonja Annalise Benton