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

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Oppression Perpetrated by the Mainstream Women’s Movement

The initial idea to put together This Bridge Called My Back stemmed from a women’s retreat that Gloria Anzaldúa attended in 1979; she had been extended a scholarship as a Third World woman to attend the retreat for free. Once there, she realized she was the only Third World woman in attendance, and she felt uncomfortable and tokenized by the white women at the retreat. This experience was not new, but it became the catalyst for Anzaldúa and Moraga to begin articulating their need to expand the concept of feminism at the time to address the racism against, and exclusion of, Third World women and women of color in the feminist movement. The issues they address are twofold: Third World women are treated as invisible, or “other,” by the largely middle-class, white feminism of the era, and the impetus to educate and justify their experiences as women is unjustly burdened on these Third World women and women of color. Moraga clearly lays out the issue of mainstream feminist ideology:

rather than using the privilege they [white feminists] have to crumble the institutions that house the source of their own oppression—sexism, along with racism—they oftentimes deny their privilege in the form of ‘downward mobility,’ or keep it intact in the form of guilt (58).

Here, Moraga reveals the danger of continued racism and classism in the women’s movement not only to Third World women, but to all women, as white feminists uphold the oppressions all women face in denying their role in oppressing Third World women. Additionally, even once white feminists decide to acknowledge their privilege, they cause harm in asking Third World women to constantly educate them rather than taking the initiative to educate themselves. As Barbara Cameron describes the harm of relying on Third World women to vouch for themselves with no validation from white women in “Gee, You Don’t Seem Like an Indian”: “it is inappropriate for progressive or liberal white people to expect warriors in brown armor to eradicate racism. There must be co-responsibility from people of color and white people to equally work on this issue” (46).

This Bridge Called My Back places the responsibility for education on the challenges Third World women face squarely on the privileged shoulders of the well-off white feminists who are helping to perpetuate the racism and classism.

Intersectionality in the Third World Woman Experience

The theme of intersectionality is central to This Bridge Called My Back, with each author alluding to the different ways her multiple identities have shaped her existence. This anthology explores the tensions and contradictions that a person may grapple with due to the multiple oppressions and privileges they experience simultaneously. The women’s movement of the time was not addressing the needs of Third World women, who have multiple oppressed identities rather than only that of being a woman, and therefore the contributions of each author serve to illuminate those experiences which were not being understood or acknowledged in mainstream feminism.

Cherríe Moraga states early in the book that “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 of necessity” (19). She is implying that the academic work of feminists at the time was removed from the lived experiences of Third World women, which benefited the majority white women publishing said articles and books. In intellectualizing Third World identities, white feminists separated said identities rather than treating them as inseparably intertwined, and as authors described the ways their variously fused identities played out, they disseminated knowledge that was needed but suppressed.

Much of This Bridge engages with not only the challenge of articulating the role of intersecting identities in regard to feminism, but in how the intersection impacts all experiences of oppression and privilege, even those that are not immediately obvious. In “Across the Kitchen Table,” Barbara and Beverly Smith touch upon what it looks like to be Black and lesbian, and how each identity informs the other. Barbara states that one reason for homophobia among Black women is connected to “the whole sexual stereotyping used against all Black people” (122) whereas, comparatively, white lesbians “don’t have a sexual image that another oppressor community has put on them” (122).

Similarly, but in an Indigenous context, Barbara Cameron points out in her essay “Gee, You Don’t Seem Like an Indian from the Reservation” that “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” (45). Cultural differences, ethnic differences, class differences, and differences in colonial histories are all brought forth in this book to be critically analyzed and reimagined beyond the limited scope of one identity or another.

Oppression from Communities and Internalization of Oppression

In addition to considering the racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism they have seen directed at them, many of the authors in This Bridge Called My Back examine the ways oppression enters, and is reflected by, those who possess oppressed identities. In her piece, “La Prieta,” a colloquial term for those with dark skin, Gloria Anzaldúa states that she views “Third World peoples and women not as oppressors but as accomplices to oppression by our unwittingly passing on to our children and our friends the oppressor’s ideologies” (207).

This theme of oppression within marginalized communities reappears throughout the book as women describe the colorism they face, lighter skin being preferred over darker skin in both Latin American communities and African American communities. Even some lighter skinned Black women, such as Mary Hope Whitehead Lee expresses in her poem “on not bein,” find that their community sees them as “not Black enough.”

Andrea Canaan lays out the overall sentiment of how communities perpetuate internalized oppression in her essay “Brownness.” Canaan expresses the difficulties of balancing the sexism she faces within her own brown community and the ways oppressions are taken inward as a defense mechanism and used against fellow marginalized people. She states that “we are both strong and weak, oppressed and oppressor of each, as well as by the white super culture. […] The brown man is not my enemy, no I his, but we must recognize that we both contribute to each other’s oppression” (235).

On the issue of internalized oppression, contributors describe the self-hatred they may feel toward themselves, craving to be what society tells them is right, is best: whiteness, heterosexuality, and manhood. In “When I Was Growing Up,” Nellie Wong describes how she learns to reject her Chinese ancestry and dreams of becoming white. In “Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision through Malintzin/or Malintzin Putting Flesh Back on the Object” by Norma Alarcón describes how a negative male conception of womanhood is perpetuated in dominant society:

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 (182).

These examples illustrate the insidious nature of oppression, the harm of internalizing it, unconsciously absorbing the mainstream narratives coming in from the media, treatment from other people, and interactions with members of one’s own community.