Intersectionality is a Bitch

I was driving to see my friend that Saturday because I had come up with a crazy adventure for both of us. I gave myself time to drive slowly; I don’t always get to notice all the store fronts and places I pass on the way to visit someone. We tend to get on the road and try to get to our destinations as quickly as possible. Rarely do we pay attention and notice, as we zoom on by to hurriedly get to where we are going. 

As I drove past Southside Richmond, I could see all the advertisements in Spanish for tacos, empanadas, clothing stores, and churches. Every single Christian denomination I could think of had a Hispanic/Latino outpost on the drive. There were Latino evangelical churches, a Latino Mormon church, a Latino Pentecostal church, a Latino Jehovah’s Witness church, a Latino Baptist church, a Latino Catholic church, and many more that I could not identify but were definitely calling out to the Spanish-speaking Latinos of Central Virginia. I could tell by the names what denomination some of the churches belonged to. There were some saints and hearts; there were also Iglesias and Centros and Ministerios.

Just a few days before that, I had received my monthly or semi-monthly handwritten letter addressed to my house from a Latino, Spanish-speaking Jehovah’s witness. It’s always a long one page, handwritten letter in Spanish imploring me to consider attending their church and services. After all, my soul is in danger. Eternity is at stake. Tucked inside the handwritten letter is always a picture of an image of Jesus and sometimes a copy of the Watchtower in Spanish. I recognize these letters immediately. They have such nice penmanship and address me as Señora or Señorita Ramirez. The words are very polite, but of course the message is not so polite. It is basically we will keep writing to you, because you are not one of us and you will die and go to hell. 

The thing is I am one of them. I am a Latina. I am a Hispanic woman. I speak Spanish natively. I learned English only once I was dropped off at kindergarten. My household was Spanish-only. I regard the folded image of Jesus in the letter. He usually is shown having blondish hair and blue eyes. This always strikes me as odd since most Latinos do not share those features. The guy writing to me, begging me to go to his church, I am sure by 99%, does not have blue eyes or blonde hair. Yet he includes this picture as if seeing this Scandinavian-looking man will convince me to attend a church by and for Central American immigrants in Richmond. It does not work. It never does. I just don’t understand how that is a selling point. I start to think that they need better public relations or some new artwork. I am pretty sure that Jesus did not look like that. 

I remember the time I was at home and there was a knock on the front door. A Latino father and his son had shown up with a Bible and pamphlets in Spanish. How did they know that I spoke Spanish? How did they know I was Latina? Are there databases that these churches sell or trade like business leads? They offered me the Bible. I told them I did not need it as I had several copies of the Tanakh at home and I could go back to the source and read it in Hebrew. They looked at me puzzled. Did they not know what Hebrew was? Did they not know that the Bible that they know (at least part of it) also came from the Torah? They offered me literature in Spanish about their church. I told them that I was very happy to be me. To be Jewish. There was no lightbulb moment in their eyes, only frustration that they could not convince me to take their Bible or pamphlets. I still get letters every month in the mail. I still get the pictures of blonde Jesus and the Spanish language pamphlets imploring me to find him before it is too late. 

Intersectionality is a B!t@h is the phrase that came into my mind on that drive to my friend’s house. After having heard the word ‘intersectionality’ as a useful tool over the years in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training spaces, I have realized that living actual intersectionality is no fun. I am referring to the kind that you live, breathe, move about in the world. Being a Latina/Hispanic/native Spanish-speaking woman and Jewish leaves me in a strange liminal space at times. Belonging to both and neither simultaneously like multi-hyphen Schrödinger’s cat. So yes, it’s a bitch having to constantly explain myself, justify my beliefs and place them into historical context for folks who are not really that interested in all that detail. All that detail is trivial when my soul is at stake, right? 

It just shot into my mind as I drove past all of the Latino churches and thought about all of the parishioners who would love to convince me that I am wrong, I am going to hell, that I have condemned myself. Why? Because I am not sitting there with them. I am a Jewish Latina. And I am not finding ‘him’. 

I have had people tell me that I went ‘backwards’. I hear the voice of one gentleman who told me: ‘as a Latina you can’t be a Jew, you have to believe in Jesus, have a complete faith’. 

But I am complete. In fact it only took 533 years for me to return to my Sefardi roots. I was incomplete before. We had to choose safety over Judaism; we had to choose to leave Spain to survive. We had to choose ‘him with the blonde hair’ so that we could continue existing. We did that for hundreds of years. 

I dug back and went a little farther back. I got my message at Mt. Sinai. I just had to wait until this generation to be complete.

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Cristina D. Ramirez is a member of Lilith’s New 40 2025 Cohort.