On the Very Edge

On the Very Edge: Bidentities in Michelle Cliff’s Fiction uses the life and work of bisexual, biracial, and bicultural author Michelle Cliff to develop an entirely new approach to intersectional cultural, race, and gender/sexuality studies that prioritizes “bi-ness” as a methodological tool. Partnered with poet Adrienne Rich and "passing” as white, Cliff’s sexuality and cultural ethnicity were often invisible, yet her work (four novels, three short story collections, and two prose poetry collections) demonstrates the intersections between bisexuality, biracialism, and biculturalism in often profound ways. Drawing on original research, interviews, diaries, editorials, and other correspondences, this is the first book-length study of Michelle Cliff’s entire literary corpus, which will have far-reaching implications in the understanding of complex Caribbean identity politics and intersectional race, gender, and sexuality studies at large. The book focuses not “simply” on bisexuality or biracialism or biculturalism as isolated identity concepts; rather, it explores the very nature of these intersectional identity categories as configured by Cliff. This book, therefore, represents a reclamation of bi identity in Cliff’s work as a much broader cultural (and not just sexual or racial) category, arguing that Cliff’s spaces and/or stages of “bi-ness” are in themselves significant in navigating complex and often damaging identity constructs.