While reading Tea and Solidarity, I could not help but be reminded of our earlier reading Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty as they share similar themes concerning the bodily exploitation resulting from colonization. Perceptions of the Hill Country Tamil’s body were externally imposed first by British colonizers and then later continued by Sri Lankan plantation managers. They were understood to be laborers, their bodies commodified as was the tea that they produced. Connecting to Ana-Maurine Lara’s text, their bodies can be understood with consideration of the “body-lands” that were constructed as a result of their colonial history. What I found interesting, though, is language serves as a mechanism through which their bodies became restricted to the land on which they were exploited, diminishing their identity to only encompass their economic value. Language is powerful in this way as it assigns meanings to bodies and can even alter one’s self-perception. Understanding language to be a means of limiting an individual’s autonomy can help us to better understand the struggle of Hill Country Tamils for dignified existences and access to resources that can enable social mobility.