This Bridge Called My Back

Overview

Updated and expanded edition of the foundational text of women of color feminism.

Bronze Medalist, 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Anthologies Category

Originally released in 1981, This Bridge Called My Back is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, “the complex confluence of identities—race, class, gender, and sexuality—systemic to women of color oppression and liberation.”

Reissued here, nearly thirty-five years after its inception, the fourth edition contains an extensive new introduction by Moraga, along with a previously unpublished statement by Gloria Anzaldúa. The new edition also includes visual artists whose work was produced during the same period as Bridge, including Betye Saar, Ana Mendieta, and Yolanda López, as well as current contributor biographies. Bridge continues to reflect an evolving definition of feminism, one that can effectively adapt to, and help inform an understanding of the changing economic and social conditions of women of color in the United States and throughout the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438454382
Publisher:	Suny Press
Publication date:	03/28/2015
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	60,842
Product dimensions:	5.99(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

A poet, playwright, and cultural activist, Cherríe Moraga is Artist in Residence in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies and in the Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity Program at Stanford University. She is the author of many books, including A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000–2010 and Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios.

Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004) was a poet, metaphysical philosopher, and scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. Her books include Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, a posthumously published collection of her work.

Table of Contents

Artwork

Catching Fire: Preface to the Fourth Edition
Cherríe Moraga

Acts of Healing
Gloria Anzaldúa and The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Literary Trust

Foreword to the First Edition, 1981
Toni Cade Bambara

The Bridge Poem
Kate Rushin

La Jornada: Preface, 1981
Cherríe Moraga

Introduction, 1981
Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa

I. Children Passing in the Streets: The Roots of Our Radicalism

When I Was Growing Up
Nellie Wong

on not bein
mary hope whitehead lee

For the Color of My Mother
Cherríe Moraga

I Am What I Am
Rosario Morales

Dreams of Violence
Naomi Littlebear Morena

He Saw
Chrystos

II. Entering the Lives of Others: Theory in the Flesh

Wonder Woman
Genny Lim

La Güera
Cherríe Moraga

Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American Woman
Mitsuye Yamada

It’s In My Blood, My Face—My Mother’s Voice, the Way I Sweat
Anita Valerio

“Gee You Don’t Seem Like An Indian from the Reservation”
Barbara Cameron

“…And Even Fidel Can’t Change That!”
Aurora Levins Morales

I Walk in the History of My People
Chrystos

III. And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You: Racism in the Women’s Movement

And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You
Jo Carrillo

Beyond the Cliffs of Abiquiu
Jo Carrillo

I Don’t Understand Those Who Have Turned Away From Me
Chrystos

Asian Pacific Women and Feminism
Mitsuye Yamada

“—But I Know You, American Woman”
Judit Moschkovich

The Black Back-Ups
Kate Rushin

The Pathology of Racism: A Conversation with Third World Wimmin
doris davenport

We’re All in the Same Boat
Rosario Morales

An open Letter to Mary Daly
Audre Lorde

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s house
Audre Lorde

IV. Between the Lines: On Culture, Class, and Homophobia

The Other Heritage
Rosario Morales

The Tired Poem: Last Letter From a Typical (Unemployed) Black Professional Woman
Kate Rushin

To Be Continued…
Kate Rushin

Across the Kitchen Table: A Sister-to-Sister Dialogue
Barbara Smith and Beverly Smith

Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance
Cheryl Clarke

Lowriding through the Women’s Movement
Barbara Noda

Letter to Ma
Merle Woo

I Come with No Illusions
Mirtha N. Quintanales

I Paid Very Hard for My Immigrant Ignorance
Mirtha N. Quintanales

Earth-Lover, Survivor, Musician
Naomi Littlebear Morena

V. Speaking in Tongues: The Third World Woman Writer

Speaking In Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers
Gloria Anzaldúa

Millicent Fredericks
Gabrielle Daniels

In Search of the Self As Hero: Confetti of Voices on New Year’s Night, A Letter to Myself
Nellie Wong

Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision through Malintzin/or Malintzin Putting Flesh Back on the Object
Norma Alarcón

Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading
Chrystos

VI. El Mundo Zurdo: The Vision

Give Me Back
Chrystos

La Prieta
Gloria Anzaldúa

A Black Feminist Statement
Combahee River Collective

The Welder
Cherríe Moraga

O.K. Momma, Who the Hell Am I? An Interview with Luisah Teish
Gloria Anzaldúa

Brownness
Andrea Canaan

Revolution: It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick
Pat Parker

No Rock Scorns Me as Whore
Chrystos

Appendix

Afterword: On the Fourth Edition
Cherríe Moraga

Foreword to the Second Edition, 1983
Gloria Anzaldúa

Refugees of a World on Fire: Foreword to the Second Edition, 1983
Cherríe Moraga

Counsels from the Firing…past, present, future: Foreword to the Third Edition, 2001
Gloria Anzaldúa

Biographies of Contributors
Biographies of the Original Contributors, 1981
Credits

Editorial Reviews

These essays and poems do more than just revisit the hopes, fears, frustrations, and accomplishments of women of color circa 1981; they also shed light on concerns women continue to face today … There are lines of poetry here sure to stir the imagination and connect with all ages, races, and genders … This Bridge Called My Back deserves to be picked up by a new generation of radical women.” — ForeWord Reviews

“Immense is my admiration for the ongoing dialogue and discourse on feminism, Indigenous feminism, the defining discussions in women of color movements and the broader movement. I have loved this book for thirty years, and am so pleased we have returned with our stories, words, and attributes to the growing and resilient movement.” — Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe), Executive Director, Honor the Earth

Praise for the Third Edition

“This Bridge Called My Back … dispels all doubt about the power of a single text to radically transform the terrain of our theory and practice. Twenty years after its publication, we can now see how it helped to untether the production of knowledge from its disciplinary anchors—and not only in the field of women’s studies. This Bridge has allowed us to define the promise of research on race, gender, class and sexuality as profoundly linked to collaboration and coalition-building. And perhaps most important, it has offered us strategies for transformative political practice that are as valid today as they were two decades ago.” — Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz

“This Bridge Called My Back … has served as a significant rallying call for women of color for a generation, and this new edition keeps that call alive at a time when divisions prove ever more stubborn and dangerous. A much-cited text, its influence has been visible and broad both in academia and among activists. We owe much of the sound of our present voices to the brave scholars and feminists whose ideas and ideals crowd its pages.” — Shirley Geok-lin Lim, University of California, Santa Barbara

“This book is a manifesto—the 1981 declaration of a new politics ‘US Third World Feminism.’ No great de-colonial writer, from Fanon, Shaarawi, Blackhawk, or Sartre, to Mountain Wolf Woman, de Beauvoir, Saussure, or Newton could have alone proclaimed this ‘politic born of necessity.’ This politic denies no truths: its luminosities drive into and through our bodies. Writers and readers alike become shape-shifters, are invited to enter the shaman/witness state, to invoke power differently. ‘US Third World Feminism’ requires a re-peopling: the creation of planetary citizen-warriors. This book is a guide that directs citizenry shadowed in hate, terror, suffering, disconnection, and pain toward the light of social justice, gender and erotic liberation, peace, and revolutionary love. This Bridge … transits our dreams, and brings them to the real.” — Chela Sandoval, University of California, Santa Barbara

From the Publisher