‘Chronically Ill-Disabled-Diasporic-Mixed Race-Queer Femme of Color’: Spotlighting the Inscriptions of Intergenerational Trauma and Abuse Through a Reading of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Memoir Dirty River

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Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a disabled, queer, mixed-race femme of color and a strong voice in the Disability justice movement who, in her memoir Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home (2015), describes the trauma of enduring childhood sexual assault and familial abuse through embodied memories while beginning to develop depression, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia. This research, based on a reading of Piepzna-Samarasinha’s memoir Dirty River, positions the author’s body with disabilities and mind with neurodivergence as sites highlighting the hidden stories of abuse, trauma, diaspora, migration, and colonialism. The paper argues that the present-day consequences of imperial and colonial oppression are embedded in intergenerational trauma, the impressions of which are found in different capacities on the bodies through conditions such as chronic illness and disability. By employing a qualitative approach, the paper scrutinizes the distinct nuances in the author’s journey to redeem her mixed-race ethnicity and reclaim her queer femme sexuality. Further, the article studies PTSD, chronic depression, fatigue, and fibromyalgia through disability discourse and underscores these bodily conditions as embodied witnessing of trauma and abuse. In essence, the paper explores how the intergenerational trauma of colonialism is resisted by and inscribed within the body of a queer femme of color by drawing a narrative arc that explores the abuse, quest for identity, and inscriptions of colonial violence through a reading of Dirty River.