The paper considers the notion of intersectionality in relation to two contemporary American immigrant narratives: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019) and Jimmy Santiago Baca’s American Orphan (2021). Starting from Vivian May’s (2015: xi) idea of intersectionality being “a form of resistant knowledge” centered around the issues of oppression, social (in)justice and political activism, I argue that contemporary American immigrant literature shares some of these traits and goals. Immigrant literature, by definition, rests on the very notion of intersectionality and very often addresses the themes of inequality and giving voice(s) to those who suffer social, cultural, economic and psychological consequences of their minority status in the host country. I also try to consider Vuong’s and Baca’s novels in view of the contemporary considerations of American immigrant literature and culture (Pelaud 2011, Peché et al. 2023, Mukherjee 2011, Weiner 2018, Cowart 2006) which highlight agency, re-storying, dealing with individual and collective traumas, disruption of the narrative flow and fluidity (as opposed to fixity) and contradiction as its key features. The main argument is that Vuong’s and Baca’s narrative styles based on uncertainty, fragmentation and fluidity reflect the idea of cultural identity as an ever-changing process constituted within representation. Both novels have been critically acclaimed, written by immigrant authors, recipients of major American literary awards and both are fictional accounts largely based on authors’ lives and their family experiences. I argue that the main strength of Vuong’s literary representation lies in his efforts to find a new language to express his own immigrant experience (as well as the collective immigrant experience of his family), the language that emulates his grandmother’s storytelling style and defies the conventional narrative flow. Thus, the fragmentation, fluidity and uncertainty of the narrative correspond with the fragmentation of memory, fluidity of one’s identity and uncertainty of both one’s past and the future. Baca’s narrative is analyzed with view to its treatment of the themes of silence, trauma, minority group experience and acquiring one’s individual voice. Furthermore, I propose that Baca’s narrative owes its powerful expression to the American literary tradition as it draws upon some of the well-known literary tropes established by American classical writers. Both novels combine traumatic individual memories, lived-through life experiences shared by many members of the authors’ respective minority groups with a masterful narrative technique producing life narratives which can be read both as works of art and powerful testimonies of human suffering and resilience.

Keywords: immigrant literature, intersectionality, Asian American literature, Chicano literature, cultural identity