“The Third Division”

Chapter 2 examines the means by which Cliff disrupts binary conceptions of identity whilst she is nevertheless beholden to her biculturalism, her biracialism, and her bisexuality. It covers Cliff’s efforts to come to terms with the apparent “void” of her biracial/bicultural identity by occupying what she terms the “third division”. The chapter argues Cliff’s assertion that “[w]e are triangular people, our feet on three islands” is as much her thesis on identity as it is an expression of her own multi-locatedness as bicultural, biracial subjects. Furthermore, the triangular nature of identity which Cliff posits defies binary logic and represents neither one state of being nor another, but a new conceptual location-space for identity.