This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

“When I was growing up, I hungered / for American food, American styles, / coded: white and even to be, a child / born of Chinese, being Chinese / was feeling foreign, was limiting, / was unAmerican.”

This quote from “When I Was Growing Up” by Nellie Wong points out the equivalence that was created in mainstream white American culture that to be American meant to be white, and how this was internalized by not only immigrant communities, but for generations on.

“I am a white girl gone brown to the blood color of my mother / speaking for her through the unnamed part of the mouth / the wide-arched muzzle of brown women.”

This quote from Cherríe Moraga’s poem “For the Color of My Mother” refers to the evolution of how she understands her identity having a white father and Chicana mother. It serves to illustrate the way identities can both intersect and evolve over time.

“Bring me your sack of rice / I want your wildness, want the boy who left on a freight car / I want a boy who cried because his mother is dead / & his daddy’s gone crazy / I want to gather water & wood / I don’t want this man who cut off his hair / joined the government / to be safe.”

This passage from Chrystos’s poem “He Saw” illustrates the difficult choices and trauma the author’s father is navigating as a Native American man trying to give his daughter a good life. This acknowledgement of the effects of intergenerational trauma is a significant consideration for the Third World identity.

“A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives—our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings—all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity.”

This quote from the introduction to the second chapter of This Bridge outlines what these Third World writers consider “theory in the flesh” to mean. In defining where theory the is rooted, the authors justify their need to share those lived experiences with the reader.

“The danger lies in ranking the oppressions. The danger lies in failing to acknowledge the specificity of the oppression. The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression purely from a theoretical base. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our own oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place.”

This quote from “La Güera” by Cherríe Moraga sums up the goal of the second chapter, providing the reader with the lived experiences of these Third World women writers. Moraga is referring to the importance of acknowledging and letting oneself connect with the external and internal experience of oppression. It’s a warning against the intellectualization of oppression, which removes a person from the intimacy and immediacy of oppression.

“Because I was permitted to go to college, permitted to take a stab at a career or two along the way, given ‘free choice’ to marry and have a family, given a ‘choice’ eventually to do both, I had assumed I was more or less free, not realizing that those who are free to make and take choices; they do not choose from options proffered by ‘those out there.’”

This quote from “Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster” by Mitsuye Yamada expresses what she sees looking back on her life and her choices; the lack of agency she experienced on a level that she did not consciously realize due to her conditioning by both white people and men.

“We not only must struggle with the racism and homophobia of straight white america, but must often struggle with the homophobia that exists within our third world communities.”

This quote from Barbara Cameron’s “Gee, You Don’t Seem Like an Indian from the Reservation” provides the justification for her belief that Third World gay people need to educate and interact with each other in order to advocate for their needs. She takes the perspective of being a woman of color and being a lesbian out of simply a white context and addresses the issues she faces within her own Indigenous community.

“Fear is a feeling—fear of losing one’s power, fear of being accused, fear of loss of status, control, knowledge. Guilt is not a feeling. It is an intellectual mask to a feeling. Fear is real. Possibly this is the emotional, non-theoretical place from which serious anti-racist work among white feminists can begin.”

This quote from the introduction to the third section of This Bridge equips readers with a better understanding of why the contributors felt the need to dedicate an entire section to humanizing theory and rooting it firmly in their lived realities. At this time, theory had been a tool for white academics, feminists in particular, to mine knowledge out of Third World women for their own benefit while excluding them from academic spaces. The editors who wrote this quote are pointing out that this exclusion and discrimination is rooted in fear, and view addressing this fear, rather than hiding behind a defense of guilt, could be one potential way to work toward a solution.

“I am talking about what is happening to us right now, about our nonsupport of each other, about our uncaring about each other, about not seeing connections between racism and sexism in our lives. As the child of immigrant parents, as a woman of color in a white society and as a woman in a patriarchal society, what is personal to me is political.”

This quote from Mitsuye Yamada’s essay “Asian Pacific American Women and Feminism” illustrates her response to those white feminists who would tell her to stop dwelling on her experiences in the concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. She expresses the crux of the issue is a lack of understanding for the intersectionality women of color face, which so many white feminists ignore. In laying out the simultaneous identities she holds, she sheds light on why activism is more dangerous for Third World women than for white women in the US, and she emphasizes the political as more than a theory or ideal, but as a personal experience.

“Think of it in terms of men’s and women’s cultures: women live in male systems, know male rules, speak male language when around men, etc. But what do men really know about women? Only screwed up myths concocted to perpetuate the power imbalance. It is the same situation when it comes to dominant and non-dominant or colonizing and colonized cultures/countries/ people. As a bilingual/bicultural woman whose native culture is not American, I live in an American system, abide by American rules of conduct, speak English when around English speakers, etc., only to be confronted with utter ignorance or concocted myths and stereotypes about my own culture.

This quote from Judit Moschkovich’s “—But I Know You, American Woman” illustrates the challenge of moving through the US with a bicultural identity. Not only does she have to learn the cultural norms of her heritage, but also that of a dominantly white America. Moreover, she is addressing the burden that white feminists place on her as a minority to educate them on her existence, rather than the other way around.

“Feminism either addresses itself to all wimmin, or it becomes even more so just another elitist, prurient white organization, defeating its own purposes.”

This quote from “The Pathology of Racism” by doris davenport stresses a key motivation behind the emerging Third World feminist movement; if feminism isn’t for all women, it is not truly against the oppression of women. Rather than working to end such oppression, it is simply a transmutation; white middle-class women working to bolster their own power within an oppressive system that they continue to sustain. This quote illustrates the sentiment among Third World feminists that only when those on the lowest rungs of society are freed of oppression will all people be free.

“I want to claim my self to be puertorican, and US american, working class & middle class, housewife and intellectual, feminist, marxist, and anti-imperialist. I want to claim my racism, especially that directed at myself, So I can struggle with it, so I can use my energy to be a woman, creative and revolutionary.”

This quote from “We Are All in the Same Boat” by Rosario Morales provides a concrete example of the many identities one Third World woman can hold, explicitly illustrating the seemingly endless variety of ways one can identify. It provides the reader an opportunity to consider the ways in which an identity could be divided, but also the concept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; Morales is more than a conglomeration of her identities, she is experiencing them all concurrently, and this is a source of her power, pride, and strength which she draws from to overcome her oppressions.

“What I really feel is radical is trying to make coalitions with people who are different from you. I feel it is radical to be dealing with race and sex and class and sexual identity all at one time. I think that is really radical because it has never been done before. […] I think there is a difference between being extreme and being radical.”

This quote, from an interview with Barbara Smith and Beverly Smith titled “Across the Kitchen Table” provides one of the only examples of how Third World writers in This Bridge may define what it means to be radical. This quote is from Barbara Smith in response to a prompt asking about how Third World women can become leaders rather than tokens in the feminist movement. Here, Barbara Smith is stressing that the solution to being tokenized by white feminists is not separation between the two, which is extreme but not what she considers to be radical, because separation has been done before in the form of segregation.

“If radical lesbian-feminism purports an anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-woman-hating vision of bonding as mutual, reciprocal, as infinitely negotiable, as freedom from antiquated gender prescriptions and proscriptions, then all people struggling to transform the character of relationships in this culture have something to learn from the lesbians.”

In this quote from Cheryl Clarke’s essay, “Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance,” she is encouraging lesbians, particularly lesbians of color, to be more visible because of their potential for combating a significant aspect of women’s oppression: “predatory heterosexuality.” She refers to a society whose value for women is in their role in procreation and taking care of men. She argues that if lesbian ideals of freedom to love women, more than on a sexual level, were realized, that all people who are trying to overcome systems of oppression can learn from lesbian political movements.

“Because of your life, because of the physical security you have given me: my education, my full stomach, my clothed and starched back, my piano and dancing lessons—all those gifts you never received—I saw myself as having worth; now I begin to love myself more, see our potential, and fight for that kind of social change that will affirm me, my race, my sex, my heritage.”

This quote from Merle Woo’s “Letter to Ma” gives voice to the foremothers of the authors, those women whose shoulders they stand on as they fight for their equal right to exist. This is a significant point as well on the privileges that the authors in this book have; they have the physical safety to do things such as write and be involved in the feminist movement.

“And of course it would be irresponsible liberal folly to propose that social and institutional racism could be eliminated by simply ‘becoming’ personally non-racist, by becoming ‘integrated’ in our private lives… How ridiculous for white folk to think that a long history of slavery (and every other kind of oppression) and an ongoing and insidious reality of social, economic, political exploitation could be magically transcended through a few individual choices.”

This quote from “I Paid Very Hard for My Immigrant Ignorance” by Mirtha N. Quintanales points out a serious issue: White liberals seem to believe they can simply not be racist and that this can solve the problems of women of color. The point is clear that more must be done, action must be taken.

“The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy. It is the quest for the self, for the center of the self, which we women of color have come to think as the ‘other’—the dark, the feminine.”

In this quote from Gloria Anzaldúa’s essay “Speaking In Tongues,” Anzaldúa is alluding to the power of writing as a woman of color. She is creating a link between the societal messaging that female is bad and dark-colored skin is bad, and a fear or discomfort that women of color experience in connecting to themselves, having internalized this message that fundamental facets of who they are is lesser or deserves the discrimination she experiences. Anzaldúa characterizes writing as one tool a woman of color can utilize to aid her in achieving that connection, to overcome the “othering” of herself and feel more whole through the act of creating.

“You have questions and more questions about violence against women, against children, against ethnic minorities and gays. You think at times you can answer them alone, but that is impossible because you live and work as a social being in this material, physical and economic world.”

This quote from “In Search of the Self as Hero” by Nelly Wong is an example of the vital need for Third World women and people of color to write; she expresses the incomprehensible violence against people that she seeks to understand, but she also admits to the limitations of her own experiences in the world. She implies the need for people of a range of identities to write, to contribute to that understanding as no one perspective can help overcome such violence.

“Because the myth of Malintzin pervades not only male thought but ours too as it seeps into our own consciousness in the cradle through their eyes as well as our mothers’, who are entrusted with the transmission of culture, we may come to believe that indeed our very sexuality condemns us to enslavement. As enslavement which subsequently manifests in self-hatred.”

This quote from “Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision through Malintzin/or Malintzin Putting Flesh Back on the Object” by Norma Alarcón expresses the harm of internalized oppression, as women are socialized in a society where the mainstream narratives are male-dominant. The figure of Malintzin serves as an example of a female figure in Hispanic literature who is demonized and represents one more example of a narrative which teaches women to hate themselves and each other.

“When we don’t participate in creating our own defined identity and reality as women, when the material and spiritual realities do not reflect us as contributors to the shaping of the world, we may feel as in Judy Lucero’s Poem, ‘I speak in an illusion:’ … ‘Nowhere can I go and break these bonds / Which have me in an illusion / but the bonds are real.’ Feminism is a way of saying that nothing in patriarchy truly reflects women unless we accept distortions—mythic and historical.”

This quote from Norma Alarcón’s critical essay “Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision through Malintzin/or Malintzin Putting Flesh Back on the Object” introduces the concept that in being oppressed and prevented from contributing to their world as they know it, women (especially women of color) are put into a position where they must accept distortions of themselves because the privileged people producing mainstream narratives about marginalized groups have a distorted view of them. She likens this acceptance of distorted reality to a poem about an illusion, because Alarcón posits that in such a position, women find themselves accepting these exclusionary dominant narratives to survive a world where they are made to feel they have little power over their reality. She states that feminism is a way of expressing the idea that the patriarchy does not accurately portray women.

“We must act in the everyday world. Words are not enough. We must perform visible and public acts that may make us more vulnerable to the very oppressions we are fighting against. But our vulnerability can be the source of our power—if we use it.”

This quote from the introduction to the sixth section of This Bridge addresses what the readers should consider as it reaches its conclusion. Rather than laying out any exact courses of action, this quote characterizes what kind of action will make a difference, beyond the words of this book. The emphasis on vulnerability harkens back to the idea that the perpetrator of oppression cannot stand to see themself in those who they discriminate against; that this humanity in vulnerability has the potential to break down these barriers between the oppressors and the oppressed.

“We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.”

This quote from the Combahee Collective’s “Black Feminist Statement” addresses both being put on a pedestal and mythologized into a “beacon of strength” which prevents her from connecting to herself or showing basic human weakness, but also the expectation of being behind both white people and men.

“This peculiar system of degrading self so that outsiders won’t hurt us so much has its base in remembered servitude, helplessness and powerlessness combined with the pride and hope that comes from surviving, mixed with the shame of surviving, the humiliation of servitude, and the rage of being considered nonhuman.”

This quote from “Brownness” by Andrea Canaan elaborates that being brown means one is not only experiencing oppression from the outside, but one also has to grapple with being the victim of self-oppression. She characterizes self-deprecating comedy as an example of the many ways people of color act to protect themselves from the hurt of being treated unhuman for so long, but also what a slippery slope that is from joking to believing in one’s own lesser worth. She explains the source of these defense mechanisms stems from feeling a lack of agency, particularly in reference to the intergenerational trauma experienced by African Americans.