Description
Goal: In this assignment, you will revisit the “Critical Autoethnography: Introduction” paper to
reflect on the knowledge you acquired throughout the three weeks in this course by rewriting that
initial paper in light of the class materials. This assignment is intended to ask you to reflect on
your learning in this course and your understanding of socially ascribed identities and history
concerning the intersecting sites of power and structural issues explored in this course.
Source Materials: You must draw on four course materials from Weeks 1, 2, and 3 to structure
your paper; at least two sources must be texts. You are welcome to include other materials from
any of the weeks for this paper. No external sources are allowed; keep to the materials available
in this course.Word Count: Essays must be between 700 -1000 words.
Other you can choose for that is : use text file material more plz
Qutami:https://spectrejournal.com/why-feminism-why-now/
Serano:https://msmagazine.com/2012/04/18/trans-feminism-t…
Patel:https://thefeministwire.com/2012/08/defining-musli..
Ahmed, Sara :https://sfonline.barnard.edu/polyphonic/ahmed_01.h…
Melissa Harris-Perry : https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segm…
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The1986
Winner0f
BEFORE
COLTJMBUS
FOTJNDATION
AMERICAN
BOOK
THIS
BRIDGE
CALLED MY
BACK
WRITINGS BY
RADICAL
WOMEN OF
COLOR
EDITORS:
_
CHERRIE MORAGA
GLORIA ANZALDUA
FOREWORD:
TONI CADE BAMBARA
a
KITCHEN TABLE: Women of Color Press
New York
Copyright © 198 L 1983 by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission in writing
from the publisher. Published in the United States by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press,
Post Office Box 908, Latham, New York 12110-0908. Originally published by Peresphone
Press, Inc. Watertown, Massachusetts, 1981.
Also by Cherrie M o r a g a
Cuentos: Stories by Latinas, ed. with Alma Gomez and M a r i a n a R o m o – C a r m o n a .
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.
Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Paso Por Sus Labios. S o u t h End Press, 1983.
Cover and text illustrations by J o h n e t t a Tinker.
Cover design by Maria von Brincken.
Text design by Pat McGloin.
Typeset in G a r t h Graphic by Serif & Sans, Inc., Boston, Mass.
Second Edition Typeset by Susan L. Yung
Second Edition, Sixth Printing.
ISBN 0-913175-03-X, paper.
ISBN 0-913175-18-8, cloth.
This bridge called my back : writings by radical women of color /
editors, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua ; foreword, Toni Cade
Bambara. — 1st ed. — Watertown, Mass. : Persephone Press,
cl981.[*]
x x v i , 261 p. : ill. ; 22 c m .
Bibliography: p. 251-261.
I S B N 0 – 9 3 0 4 3 6 – 1 0 – 5 (pbk.) : S9.95
1. Feminism—Literary collections. 2. Radicalism—Literary collections. 3.
Minority w o m e n — U n i t e d States—Literary collections. 4. American literature
—Women authors. 5. A m e r i c a n literature—Minority authors. 6. A m e r i c a n
literature—20th century. I. Moraga, Cherrie II. A n z a l d u a , Gloria.
PS509.F44T5
81-168894
810 ‘.8 ‘09287—dcl9
AACR 2
Library of C o n g r e s s
MARC
[r88]rev
[*]—2nd ed. — Latham, NY: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, cl983.
C H R Y S T O S : ” C e r e m o n y for Completing a Poetry Reading,” copyright © 1976 by
Chrystos, first appeared in Wotnanspirit, reprinted by permission. C O M B A H E E RIVER
COLLECTIVE: “A Black Feminist Statement,” first appeared in Capitalist
Patriarchy
and the Case for Socialist Feminism, Zillah R. Eisenstein, ed. (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1979), reprinted by permission. D O R I S D A V E N P O R T : “The Pathology
of Racism,” copyright © 1980 by Doris Davenport, first appeared in Spinning O f f .
reprinted by permission. HATTIE GOSSETT:”billie lives! billielives! ” c o p y r i g h t © 1980
by Hattie Gossett; “who told you anybody wants t o hear f r o m you? you ain’t nothing but a
black w o m a n ! , ” copyright © 1980 by Hattie Gossett. M A R Y H O P E LEE: “on not being,”
copyright © 1979 by Mary H o p e Lee, first appeared in Callaloo, reprinted by permission.
A U D R E LORDE: “An O p e n Letter to Mary Daly,” copyright © 1980 by Audre Lorde,
first appeared in Top Ranking, reprinted by permission. ” T h e Master’s Tools Will Never
Dismantle the Master’s House,” copyright © 1980 by Audre Lorde. PAT PARKER:
“Revloution: It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick,” copyright © 1980 by Pat Parker. KATE
R U S H I N . ” T h e Bridge Poem, copyright © 1981 by D o n n a K. Rushin. M I T S L Y E
Y A M A D A : “Invisibility is an U n n a t u r a l Disaster,” copyright © 1979 by Bridge: An Asian
American Perspective, reprinted by permission.
para
Elvira Moraga Lawrence y
Amalia García Anzaldúa
y para todas nuestras m a d r e s
por la obediencia y
la insurrección
q u e ellas nos enseñaron.
for
Elvira Moraga Lawrence and
Amalia Garcia Anzaldua
and tor all our m o t h e r s
for the obedience and rebellion
they taught us.
When Persephone Press, Inc., a white women’s press of Watertown,
Massachusetts and the original publishers of Bridge, ceased operation in the
Spring of 1983, this book had already gone out of print. After many months of
negotiations, the co-editors were finally able to retrieve control of their book,
whereupon Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press of New York agreed to republish it.
The following, then, is the second edition of This Bridge Called My Back,
conceived of and produced entirely by women of color.
REFUGEES OF A WORLD ON
FIRE
Foreword to the Second Edition
Three years later, I try to imagine the newcomer to Bridge. What do
you need to know? I have heard from people that the book has
helped change some minds (and hopefully hearts as well), but it has
changed no one more than the women who contributed to its existence. It has changed my life so fundamentally that today I feel almost the worst person to introduce you to Bridge, to see it through
fresh eyes. Rather your introduction or even réintroduction should
come from the voices of the women of color who first discovered the
book:
The woman writers seemed to be speaking to me, and
they actually understood what I was going through.
Many of you put into words feelings I have had that I
had no way of e x p r e s s i n g . . . T h e writings justified
some of my thoughts telling me I had a right to feel as I
did. It is remarkable to me that one book could have
such an impact. So many feelings were brought alive
inside me.*
For the new reader, as well as for the people who may be looking
at Bridge for the second or third time, I feel the need to speak to
what I think of the book some three years later. Today I leaf through
the pages of Bridge and imagine all the things so many of us would
say differently or better —watching my own life and the lives of these
writers/activists grow in commitment to whatever it is we term “our
work.” We are getting older, as is our movement.
I think that were Bridge to have been conceived of in 1983, as
opposed to 1979, it would speak much more directly now to the
r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n w o m e n a n d m e n of color, b o t h gay a n d
heterosexual. In 1979, response to a number of earlier writings by
women of color which in the name of feminism focused almost exclusively on relations between the sexes, Bridge intended to make a
clean break from that phenomenon.* Instead, we created a book
which concentrated on relationships between women.
*Alma Ayala, a nineteen-year-old P u e r t o Rican, f r o m a letter to Gloria A n z a l d u a .
Once this right has been established, however, once a movement
has provided some basic consciousness so that heterosexism and
sexism are not considered the normal course of events, we are in a
much stronger position to analyze our relations with the men of our
families and communities from a position of power rather than
compromise. A Bridge of 1983 could do this. (I am particularly
e n c o u r a g e d by the organizing potential b e t w e e n Third World
lesbians and gay men in our communities of color.)
The second major difference a 1983 version of Bridge would
provide is that it would be much more international in perspective.
Although the heart of Bridge remains the same, the impetus to forge
links with women of color from every region grows more and more
urgent as the number of recently-immigrated people of color in the
U.S. grows in enormous proportions, as we begin to see ourselves all
as refugees of a world on fire:
The U.S. is training troops in Honduras to overthrow the Nicaraguan people’s government.
Human rights violations are occurring on a massive scale in Guatemala and El Salvador (and as in this country those most hardhit are often the indigenous peoples of those lands).
Pinochet escalates political repression in Chile.
The U.S. invades Grenada.
Apartheid continues to bleed South Africa.
Thousands of unarmed people are slaughtered in Beirut by
Christian militiamen and Israeli soldiers.
Aquino is assassinated by the Philippine government.
And in the U.S.? The Reagan administration daily drains us of
nearly every political gain made by the feminist, Third World,
and anti-war work of the late 60’s and early 70’s.
The question and challenge for Third World feminism remains:
what are the particular conditions of oppression suffered by women
of color in each of these situations? How has the special circumstances of her pain been overlooked by Third World movements, solidarity groups, “international feminists?” How have the children
suffered? How do we organize ourselves to survive this war? To keep
our families, our bodies, our spirits intact?
* Conditions: Five. The Black Women’s
Smith in 1979 w a s a m a j o r exception.
Issue ed. by Lorraine Bethel and Barbara
Sometimes in the face of my own/our own limitations, in the face
of such world-wide suffering, I doubt even the significance of books.
Surely this is the same predicament so many people who have tried
to use words as weapons have found themselves in — ¿Cara a cara
con el enemigo de que valen mis palabras?* This is especially true
for Third World women writers, who know full well our waitings
seldom directly reach the people we grew up with. Sometimes
knowing this makes you feel like you’re dumping your words into a
very deep and very dark hole. But we continue to write. To the
people of color we do reach and the people they touch. We even
w7rite to those classes of people for whom books have been as common to their lives as bread. For finally we write to anyone who will
listen with their ears open (even if only a crack) to the currents of
change around them.
The political writer, then, is the ultimate optimist, believing
people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and
penetrate the privatism of our lives. A privatism which keeps us
back and away from each other, which renders us politically useless.
At the time of this writing, however, I am feeling more discouraged
than optimistic. The dream of a unified Third World feminist movement in this country as we conceived of it when we first embarked
on the project of this book, seemed more possible somehow, because
as of yet, less tried. It was still waiting in the ranks begging to take
form and hold. In the last three years I have learned that Third World
feminism does not provide the kind of easy political framework that
women of color are running to in droves. We are not so much a “natural” affinity group, as women who have come together out of political necessity. The idea of Third World feminism has proved to be
much easier between the covers of a book than between real live
women. There are many issues that divide us; and, recognizing that
fact can make that dream at times seem quite remote. Still, the need
for a broad-based U.S. women of color movement capable of spanning borders of nation and ethnicity has never been so strong.
If we are interested in building a movement that will not constantly
be subverted by internal differences, then we must build from the insideout, not the other way around. Coming to terms with the suffering of others has never meant looking away from our own.
And, we must look deeply. We must acknowledge that to change
the world, we have to change ourselves—even sometimes our most
cherished block-hard convictions. As This Bridge Called My Back is
not written in stone, neither is our political vision. It is subject
to change.
• F a c e to face with enemy, what good are my words’.’
I must confess I hate the thought of this. Change don’t come easy.
For anyone. But this state of war we live in, this world on fire provides us with no other choice.
If the image of the bridge can bind us together, I think it does so
most powerfully in the words of Donna Kate Rushin, w h e n she
insists:
“stretch…or die.”
Cherrie Moraga
October 1983
Foreword to the Second Edition
¿Qué hacer de aquí y cómo?
¡What to do from here and how?)
Perhaps like me you are tired of suffering and talking about
suffering, estás hasta el pescuezo de sufrimiento, de contar las
lluvias de sangre pero no has lluvias de flores [up to your neck with
suffering, of counting the rains of blood but not the rains of flowers).
Like me you may be tired of making a tragedy of our lives. A
a b a n d o n a r ese a u t o c a n i b a l i s m o : coraje, tristeza, m i e d o [let’s
abandon this autocannibahsm: rage, sadness, fear). Basta de gritar
contra el viento —toda palabra es ruido si no está acompañada de
acción (enough of shouting against the wind—all words are noise if
not accompanied
with action). D e j e m o s de h a b l a r h a s t a q u e
hagamos la palabra luminosa y activa ¡let’s work not talk, let’s say nothing
until we’ve made the world luminous and active). Basta de pasividad
y de pasatiempo mientras esperamos al novio, a la novia, a la Diosa,
o a la R e v o l u c i ó n ¡enough of passivity and passing time while
waiting for the boy friend, the girl friend, the Goddess, or the
Revolution).
No nos p o d e m o s q u e d a r p a r a d a s con los brazos
cruzados en medio del puente ¡we can’t afford to stop in the middle
of the bridge with arms crossed).
And yet to act is not enough. Many of us are learning to sit
perfectly still, to sense the presence of the Soul and commune with
Her. We are beginning to realize that we are not wholly at the mercy
of circumstance, nor are our lives completely out of our hands. That
if we posture as victims we will be victims, that hopelessness is
suicide, that self-attacks stop us on our tracks. We are slowly
moving past the resistance within, leaving behind the defeated
images. We have come to realize that we are not alone in our
struggles nor separate nor autonomous but that we —white black
straight queer female male—are connected and interdependent. We
are each accountable for what is happening down the street, south
of the border or across the sea. And those of us who have more
of anything: brains, physical strength, political power, spiritual energies, are learning to share them with those that don’t have.
We are learning to depend more and more on our own sources
for survival, learning not to let the weight of this burden, the
bridge, break our backs. Haven’t we always borne jugs of water, children, poverty? Why not learn to bear baskets of hope, love, self-
nourishment and to step lightly?
With This Bridge…hemos
comenzado a salir de las sombras;
hemos comenzado a reventar rutina y costumbres opresivas y a
aventar los tabúes; hemos comenzado a acarrear con orgullo la
tarea de deshelar corazones y cambiar conciencias ¡we have begun
to come out of the shadows; we have begun to break with routines
and oppressive customs and to discard taboos; we have commensed
to carry with pride the task of thawing hearts and changing
consciousness). Mujeres, a no dejar que el peligro del viaje y la
inmensidad del territorio nos asuste—a mirar hacia adelante y a
abrir paso en el monte ¡Women, let’s not let the danger of the
journey and the vastness of the territory scare us—let’s look forward
and open paths in these woods). Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace
puentes al andar ¡Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as
one walks).
Contigo,
Gloria Anzaldua
vi
Foreword
How I cherish this collection of cables, esoesses, conjurations and
fusile missies. Its motive force. Itsgathering-us-in-ness. Its midwifery
of mutually wise understandings. Its promise of autonomy and community. And its pledge of an abundant life for us all. On time. That is
to say – overdue, given the times. (“Arrogance rising, moon in oppression, sun in destruction” – Cameron.)
Blackfoot
amiga Nisei hermana
Down Home Up Souf Sistuh
sister El Barrio suburbia
Korean
The Bronx Lakota
Menominee
Cubana Chinese Puertoriquena reservation Chicana
campanera
and letters
testimonials
poems
interviews
essays
journal
entries
sharing
Sisters of the yam
Sisters of the rice
Sisters
of the corn
Sisters of the plantain putting in telecalls to each other.
And we’re all on the line.
Now that we’ve begun to break the silence and begun to break
through the diabolically erected barriers and can hear each other and
see each other, we can sit down with trust and break bread together.
Rise up and break our chains as well. For though the initial motive of
several siter/riters here may have been to protest, complain or explain
to white feminist would-be allies that there are other ties and visions
that bind, prior allegiances and priorities that supercede their invitations to coalesce on their terms (“Assimilation within a solely westerneuropean herstory is not acceptable” – Lorde), the process of examining
that would-be alliance awakens us to new tasks (“We have a lot
more to concentrate on beside the pathology of white wimmin”
-davenport)
and a new connection:
a new set of recognitions:
a new site of accountability:
a new source of power :
US
US
US
US
And the possibilities intuited here or alluded to there or called forth in
various pieces in flat out talking in tongues – the possibility of several
million women refuting the numbers game inherent in “minority,” the
possibility of denouncing the insulated/orchestrated conflict game of
divide and conquer – through the fashioning of potent networks of all
the daughters of the ancient mother cultures is awesome, mighty, a
glorious life work. This Bridge lays down the planks to cross over on to
a new place where stooped labor cramped quartered down pressed
vii
and caged up combatants can straighten the spine and expand the
lungs and make the vision manifest (“The dream is real, my friends.
The failure to realize it is the only unreality.” – Street Preacher in The
Salt Eaters).
This Bridge documents particular rites of passage. Coming of age
and coming to terms with community – race, group, class, gender, self
– its expectations, supports, and lessons. And coming to grips with its
perversions – racism, prejudice, elitism, misogyny, homophobia, and
murder. And coming to terms with the incorporation of disease, struggling to overthrow the internal colonial/pro-racist loyalties – color/
hue/hair caste within the household, power perversities engaged in
under the guise of “personal relationships/’ accommodation to and collaboration with self-ambush and amnesia and murder. And coming to
grips with those false awakenings too that give use ease as we substitute a militant mouth for a radical politic, delaying our true coming of
age as committed, competent, principled combatants.
There is more than a hint in these pages that too many of us still
equate tone with substance, a hot eye with clear vision, and congratulate ourselves for our political maturity. For of course it takes more
than pique to unite our wrath (“the capacity of heat to change the
shape of things” – Moraga) and to wrest power from those who have it
and abuse it, to reclaim our ancient powers lying dormant with
neglect (“i wanna ask billie to teach us how to use our voices like she
used hers on that old 78 record” -gossett), and create new powers in
arenas where they never before existed. And of course it takes more
than the self-disclosure and the bold glimpse of each others’ life documents to make the grand resolve to fearlessly work toward potent
meshings. Takes more than a rinsed lens to face unblinkingly the particular twists of the divide and conquer tactics of this moment: the
practice of withdrawing small business loans from the Puerto Rican
grocer in favor of the South Korean wig shop, of stripping from Black
students the Martin Luther King scholarship fund fought for and
delivering those funds up to South Vietnamese or white Cubans or any
other group the government has made a commitment to in its greedy
grab for empire. We have got to know each other better and teach each
other our ways, our views, if we’re to remove the scales (“seeing radical
differences where they don’t exist and not seeing them when they are
critical” – Quintanales) and get the work done.
This Bridge can get us there. Can coax us into the habit of listening to
each other and learning each other’s ways of seeing and being. Of
hearing each other as we heard each other in Pat Lee’s Freshtones, as
we heard each other in Pat Jones and Faye Chiang, et. al.’s Ordinary
viii
Women, as we heard each other in Fran Beale’s Third World Women’s
Alliance newspaper. As we heard each other over the years in
snatched time moments in hallways and conference corridors,
caucusing between sets. As we heard each other in those split second
interfacings of yours and mine and hers student union meetings. As
we heard each other in that rainbow attempt under the auspices of
IFCO years ago. And way before that when Chinese, ¿Mexican, and
African women in this country saluted each other’s attempts to form
protective leagues. And before that when New Orleans African
women and Yamassee and Yamacrow women went into the swamps
to meet with Filipino wives of “draftees” and “defectors” during the so
called French and Indian War. And when members of the maroon
communities and women of the long lodge held council together while
the Seminole Wars raged. And way way before that, before the breaking of the land mass when we mothers of the yam, of the rice, of the
maize, of the plantain sat together in a circle, staring into the camp
fire, the answers in our laps, knowing how7 to focus. . .
Quite frankly, This Bridge needs no Foreword. It is the Afterward
that’ll count. The coalitions of women determined to be a danger to
our enemies, as June Jordan would put it. The will to be dangerous
(“ask billie so we can learn how to have those bigtime bigdaddies
jumping outta windows and otherwise offing theyselves in droves”
-gossett). And the contracts we creative combatants will make to
mutually care and cure each other into wholesomeness. And the blueprints we will draw up of the new order we will make manifest. And
the personal unction we will discover in the mirror, in the dreams, or on
the path across This Bridge. The work: To make revolution irresistible.
Blessings,
Toni Cade Bambara
Novelist Bambara and interviewer Kalamu Ya Salaam were discussing
a call she made in The Salt Eaters through The Seven Sisters, a multicultural, multi-media arts troupe, a call to unite our wra’h, our vision,
our powers.
Kalamu: Do you think that fiction is the most effective way to do
this?
Toni:
No. The most effective way to do it, is to do it!*
+
“ln Search of the M o t h e r Tongue: An Interview with Toni C a d e Bambara” First Wor(J
Journal Fall, 1980!.
Contents
Foreword
Toni Cade Bambara
Preface
Cherríe Moraga
The Bridge Poem
Donna Kate Rushin
Introduction
Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa
vi
xiii
xxi
xxiii
Children Passing in the Streets
The Roots of Our Radicalism
When I Was Growing Up
Nellie Wong
on not bein
mary hope lee
For the Color of My Mother
Cherríe Moraga
I Am What I Am
Rosario Morales
Dreams of Violence
Naomi Littlebear
He Saw
Chrystos
7
9
12
14
16
18
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
25
27
35
41
“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
46
53
57
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 American Women and Feminism
Mitsuye Yamada
Millicent Fredericks
Gabrielle Daniels
” – But I Know You, American Woman”
Judit Moschkovich
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
63
65
68
71
76
79
85
91
94
98
Between the Lines
On Culture, Class, and Homophobia
The Other Heritage
Rosario Morales
billie lives! billie lives!
hattie gossett
Across the Kitchen Table:
A Sister-to-Sister Dialogue
Barbara Smith and Beverly Smith
107
109
113
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 Quintanales
I Paid Very Hard for My Immigrant Ignorance
Mirtha Quintanales
Earth-Lover, Survivor, Musician
Naomi Littlebear
128
138
140
148
150
157
Speaking in Tongues
The Third World Woman Writer
Speaking in Tongues: A Letter
To Third World Women Writers
Gloria Anzaldua
w h o told you anybody w a n t s to hear from you?
you ain’t nothing but a black woman!
hattie gossett
In Search of the Self as Hero:
Confetti of Voices on New Year’s Night
Nellie Wong
Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision
Through Malintzin/or Malintzin:
Putting Flesh Back on the Object
Norma Alar con
Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading
Chrystos
165
175
177
182
191
El Mundo Zurdo
The Vision
Give Me Back
Chrystos
LaPrieta
Gloria Anzaldua
A Black Feminist Statement
Combahee River Collective
The Welder
Cherrie Moraga
197
198
210
219
O.K. Momma, Who the Hell Am I?:
An Interview with Luisah Teish
Gloria Anzaldua
Brownness
Andrea Canaan
Revolution: It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick
Pat Parker
No Rock Scorns Me as Whore
Chrystos
221
232
238
243
Biographies of the Contributors
246
Third World Women in the United States By and About Us: A Selected Bibliography
Cherrxe Moraga
251
xiii
Preface
Change does not occur in a vacuum. In this preface I have tried to recreate for you my own journey of struggle, growing consciousness,
and subsequent politicization and vision as a woman of color. I want to
reflect in actual terms how this anthology and the women in it and
around it have personally transformed my life, sometimes rather
painfully but always with richness and meaning.
I Transfer and Go Underground
IBoston, Massachusetts-July
20, 1980}
It is probably crucial to describe here the way this book is coming
together, the journey it is taking me on. The book still not completed
and I have traveled East to find it a publisher. Such an anthology is in
high demands these days. A book by radical women of color. The Left
needs it, with its shaky and shabby record of commitment to women,
period. Oh, yes, it can claim its attention to “color” issues, embodied in
the male. Sexism is acceptable to the white left publishing house, particularly if spouted through the mouth of a Black man.
The feminist movement needs the book, too. But for different reasons. Do I dare speak of the boredom setting in among the white sector
of the feminist movement? What was once a cutting edge, growing
dull in the too easy solution to our problems of hunger of soul and
stomach. The lesbian separatist Utopia? No thank you, sisters. I can’t
prepare myself a revolutionary packet that makes no sense when I
leave the white suburbs of Watertown, Massachusetts and take the
T-line to Black Roxbury.
Take Boston alone, I think to myself and the feminism my so-called
sisters have constructed does nothing to help me make the trip from
one end of town to another. Leaving Watertown, I board a bus and
ride it quietly in my light flesh to Harvard Square, protected by the
gold highlights my hair dares to take on, like an insult, in this miserable heat.
I transfer and go underground.
Julie told me the other day how they stopped her for walking
through the suburbs. Can’t tell if she’s a man or a woman, only know
that it’s Black moving through that part of town. They wouldn’t spot
her here, moving underground.
xiv
Cherríe
Moraga
The train is abruptly stopped. A white man in jeans and tee shirt
breaks into the car I’m in, throws a Black kid up against the door,
handcuffs him and carries him away. The train moves on. The day
before, a 14-year-old Black boy was shot in the head by a white cop.
And, the summer is getting hotter.
I hear there are some women in this town plotting a lesbian revolution. What does this mean about the boy shot in the head is what I
want to know. 1 am a lesbian. I want a movement that helps me make
some sense of the trip from Watertown to Roxbury, from white to
Black. I love women the entire way, beyond a doubt.
Arriving in Roxbury, arriving at Barbara’s*.. . .By the end of the
evening of our first visit together, Barbara comes into the front room
where she has made a bed for me. She kisses me. Then grabbing my
shoulders she says, very solid-like, “we’re sisters.” I nod, put myself into bed, and roll around with this word, sisters, for two hours before
sleep takes on. I earned this with Barbara. It is not a given between
us – Chicana and Black – to come to see each other as sisters. This is
not a given. I keep wanting to repeat over and over and over again, the
pain and shock of difference, the joy of commonness, the exhilaration
of meeting through incredible odds against it.
But the passage is through, not over, not by, not around, but through.
This book, as long as I see it for myself as a passage through, I hope will
function for others, colored* * or white, in the same way. How do we
develop a movement that can live with the fact of the loves and lives of
these women in this book?
I would grow despairing if I believed, as Rosario Morales refutes,
we were unilaterally defined by color and class. Lesbianism is then a
hoax, a fraud. I have no business with it. Lesbianism is supposed to be
about connection.
What drew me to politics was my love of women, the agony I felt in
observing the straight-jackets of poverty and repression 1 saw people
in my own family in. But the deepest political tragedy I have experienced is how with such grace, such blind faith, this commitment to
w o m e n in the feminist movement grew to be exclusive and reactionary. I call my white sisters on this.
I have had enough of this. And, I am involved in this book because
more than anything else I need to feel enlivened again in a movement
* I w a n t to a c k n o w l e d g e and t h a n k Barbara Smith for her s u p p o r t as a sister, her insights as a political activist and visionary, and especially for her w a y with w o r d s in helping m e pull this together.
* ” T h r o u g h o u t the text, the w o r d “colored” will be used by the editors in referring to all
Third World peoples a n d people of color unless o t h e r w i s e specified.
Cherríe
xv
Moraga
that can, as my friend Amber Hollibaugh states, finally ask the right
questions and admit to not having all the answers.
A Bridge Gets Walked Over
/Boston, Massachusetts-July
25, 19801
I am ready to go home now. I am ready. Very tired. Couldn’t sleep all
night. Missing home. There is a deep fatigue in my body this morning.
I feel used up. Adrienne asks me if I can write of what has happened
with me while here in Boston. She asks me if I can, not would. I say,
yes, I think so. And now I doubt it. The pain of racism, classism. Such
overused and trivialized words. The pain of it all. I do not feel people
of color are the only ones hurt by racism.
Another meeting. Again walking into a room filled with white
women, a splattering of women of color around the room. The issue
on the table, Racism. The dread and terror in the room lay like a thick
immovable paste above all our shoulders, white and colored, alike.
We, Third World women in the room, thinking back to square one,
again.
How can we — this time — not use our bodies to be thrown over a river of
tormented history> to bridge the gap? Barbara says last night: “A bridge
gets walked over.” Yes, over and over and over again.
I watch the white women shrink before my eyes, losing their fluidity
of argument, of confidence, pause awkwardly at the word, “race”, the
word, “color.” The pauses keeping the voices breathless, the bodies
taut, erect – unable to breathe deeply, to laugh, to moan in despair, to
cry in regret. I cannot continue to use my body to be walked over to
make a connection. Feeling every joint in my body tense this morning,
used.
What the hell am I getting myself into? Gloria’s voice has recurred to
me throughout this trip. A year and a half ago, she warned and encouraged: “This book will change your life, Cherrie. It will change
both our lives.” And it has. Gloria, I wish you were here.
A few days ago, an old friend said to me how when she first met me,
I seemed so white to her. I said in honesty, I used to feel more white.
You know, I really did. But at the meeting last night, dealing with
white women here on this trip, I have felt so very dark: dark with
anger, with silence, with the feeling of being walked over.
I wrote in my journal: “My growing consciousness as a woman of
color is surely seeming to transform my experience. How could it be
that the more I feel with other women of color, the more I feel myself
Chicana, the more susceptible I am to racist attack!”
Ch
