”New Money Trash,” Meet ”Dope Bitch” : An Intersectional Analysis of Identity in Such a Fun Age

Abstract: This essay explores the theme of identity in Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age (2019). The study departs from intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989; McCall 2005) and focuses on the concepts of race (Barnshaw 2008; Keaton 2018), social class (Peckham 2010) and privilege (Bhopal 2018), which rest on a common ground of gender. Moreover, these are all elements of a person’s social identity (Eriksen 2014) and will be examined as such. Through the main characters of Emira and Alix, this essay analyzes and compares the construction of the self, how their social identities affect that process of construction, and how they relate to those social identities.