Praise for This Bridge Called My Back

“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
 This Bridge
Called My Back
Fortieth Anniversary Edition
Celia Herrera Rodríguez, Omecihuatl, 1979
Watercolor on fiberglass paper, 22″ × 30″
Destroyed in fire in 1982
 This Bridge
Called My Back
writings by
radical women of color

Fortieth Anniversary Edition

Edited by
Cherríe Moraga
and
Gloria Anzaldúa
Cover art designed by Amane Kaneko

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2021 Cherríe Moraga and The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Literary Trust

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission of the publisher. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

www.sunypress.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

This bridge called my back : writings by radical women of color / edited by Cherríe L. Moraga and
Gloria E. Anzaldúa. — Fortieth anniversary edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-8827-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-8828-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Feminism—Literary collections. 2. Women—United States—Literary collections. 3. American
literature—Minority authors. 4. Minority women—Literary collections. 5. American literature—
Women authors. 6. Radicalism—Literary collections. I. Moraga, Cherríe, editor. II. Anzaldúa, Gloria,
editor.

PS509.F44T5 2015
810.8′09287—dc23 2014039109

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
para
Elvira Moraga Lawrence y
Amalia García Anzaldúa
y para todas nuestras madres
por la obediencia y
la insurrección
que ellas nos enseñaron.

for
Elvira Moraga Lawrence and
Amalia García Anzaldúa
and for all our mothers
for the obedience and rebellion
they taught us.
Contents

Artwork

Enough Is Enough: Preface to the Fortieth Anniversary Edition

Cherríe Moraga

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

Catching Fire: Introduction, 2015

Cherríe Moraga

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 Carillo

Beyond the Cliffs of Abiquiu

Jo Carillo

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
Artwork

Omecihuatl, 1979
Celia Herrera Rodríguez

Mattie Looks for Steven Biko, 1985

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie

Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1978

Yolanda M. López

The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972

Betye Saar

New Country Daughter/Lebanese American, 1981

Happy/L.A. Hyder

Aveugle Voix, 1975

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Los desaparecidos en el cielo, 1977

Liliana Wilson

Untitled (Body Tracks), 1974

Ana Mendieta
 Enough Is Enough
Preface to the Fortieth Anniversary Edition

Cherríe Moraga

The phenomenon of a forty-year-old This Bridge Called My Back may be

best understood as a document of the living legacy of forebearers bound not
by blood, but by the bridge of intracultural women of color consciousness
—the living breadth of which far exceeds the pages and geographies of this
book. A certain collective ancestral spirit has sustained this collection
through its many pauses in production, including the untimely death of
coeditor Gloria Anzaldúa in 2004. Along with her, we remember each of
the contributors who have joined Gloria as ancestor: Audre Lorde, Toni
Cade Bambara, (la Boricua) Rosario Morales, Barbara Cameron (Lakota),
and the power that is Pat Parker.
A few days before this writing, Hawaiian sovereignty activist and
writer-warrior Haunani-Kay Trask joined this pantheon of sisters. One week
earlier, a Chicana foremother of Bridge, Betita Martínez, also passed at the
age of ninety-six. With the proximity of their departures, the word
“sisterhood” resonates more deeply in me than it has in a long time. As
foremothers, they become our accessible relations. I turn to them in this
writing.

What might be the collective message of This Bridge Called My Back in

2021? What would the chorus herein of the twenty-nine writers—sisters of
the yam, of the rice, of the corn, of the plantain1—say to young people
today? I am confident of one thing: it would refuse the seduction of a return
to the “normal.” COVID opened our eyes to what we, as people of color,
queer and trans, elder and disabled, immigrant and Native, have known all
along: the hierarchical structure of privilege in this world determines who
gets to live and who dies. The “normal” is what got us here inside the
numbing heart of the disproportionate numbers of our loss.
I go to the subtitle of Bridge for direction: “Writings by Radical
Women of Color.” We named this work “radical” toward the
uncompromised excavation of the root of our oppression y la raíz de nuestra
liberación.

“When did globalization begin?” my students ask. (It is a creative writing

class.)
I answer. “About five hundred and thirty years ago.”
Philosopher María Lugones (1944–2020) reminds us that with that first
1492 moment of European contact with América,2 no honest encounters
between worlds ever truly happened. No good-faith transactions of ways
and means; no genuine “free trade”; no routes shaped simply by the
currents of curious footsteps, followed by an equitable exchange of shining
stones for seeds that might grow a sustainable future.
From the moment of that initial meeting with Europe, none of us were
ever fully allowed to witness the human face of whiteness before
“whiteness,” before “race” and racism had deformed its beholder. Racism,
structurally executed through patriarchy, is the unredeemable and tragic cost
of colonization.
As a result, those of us who see ourselves as active (dis)inheritors of
colonization are still trying to recover within ourselves a different history of
world relation. We imagine free-traveling African and original Américan
philosophers; voyagers from near and far, proffering distinct modes of
equitable governance, sustainable living, and healing practices. So much
has been lost—technologies and teachings, credos y creaciones—and so
much needs to be found for the survival and flourishing of remaining
peoples, species, mountains, streams, and just daily drinkable water.
We cannot assess the loss without reckoning with true and full
histories; the confrontation with, and the insights into, the tragic horror of
(neo)colonization as the widening breadth of its bite consumes the planet. I
confess it is difficult to bear witness to the logical global consequence of
colonization—a way of seeing the world without hope, a world where the
virus of greed ultimately wins.
It’s everywhere—a cancel culture that binds our tongues, a corporate
academy with more insidious methods. The current vernacular is wrought
with political implications. One which steals original thought on the daily
and quickly commodifies it into jargon; one which turns once good words
like “diversity” and “democracy” into generic meaninglessness in an
“exceptional” America. We can read too well the sense of entitlement
implicit in self-appointed “ally-ships” and the limitations of US
Anglocentric antiracist activism that never bothers to look south of the
border or even west of the Mississippi to the complex histories of
colonization, caste systems, and liberation struggles impacting the whole of
América, to this day.
It seems that as we grow older, we encounter fewer and fewer words to
describe the depth of what we have come to know. Each day our preguntas
se vuelven mas profundas y mas silenciadas.3 I leaf through the pages of
Bridge in search of the language that might ignite the words I need to speak
for the “we” of Bridge.
“The holocaust has already occurred,” Chrystos writes. “What follows
is only the burning brush. How my heart aches & cries to write these
words … I will be screaming no no no more destruction in that last blinding
light” (245). These are last lines in the final “Vision” section of this book.
They may be the most “radical” and instructive words for Bridge readers of
today. For, if all that we have left in face of the transnational theft of earth’s
resources and its consequent global warming are: mass incarcerations, the
forced dislocation of Indigenous communities, children in cages; starvation
in Yemen; Palestine bombed and bombed again; víctimas del feminicidio
and los desaparecidos scattered throughout the once fertile milpas of Latin
America; while school girls are still being abducted in Nigeria; if
worldwide, the poor grow ever poorer and the rich grow richer than ever, if
the Colorado river has finally run dry and over one billion sea creatures are
“cooked alive” in the Salish Sea during the latest heat wave in the
Northwest, if … if … if … then our collective informed resistance in the
form of “No” is the only justifiable response.
No. No. No. More. Destruction. This is the cry of radical consciencia.
This is three Black women saying “No.” No to impunity, no to the
murder of Black and Brown folk by the police. This is the birth of the Black
Lives Matter movement.
This is Standing Rock, saying “No” to the Dakota Access Pipeline and
Indigenous activists blocking Enbridge Energy Line 3 construction in
Minnesota.
This is a “Me, Too” movement first voiced by a Black activist from the
Bronx, Tarana Burke.
This is Berta Cáceres (Lenca), murdered in 2016, defending her land
and water rights in Honduras.
And this is Haunani-Kay Trask, resounding an unequivocal No. “We
are not American! We will die as Hawaiians! We will never be American!”
This is women of color feminisms spearheading radical action on the
ground in virtually every area of anti-globalization and human rights
movements, including world poverty, violence against women, and trans
liberation. This is intersectionality as living practice.
In the resistant body of that “No” resides an authentic affirmation for a
radically altered future. But here may be the hardest truth to swallow: that
even in our so-called resistance, we must move through this world
differently; we must acknowledge that we are not the center of the universe
and must never design to be so. There are whole worlds of knowledge that
we are not privy to, here and elsewhere. We are blessed if and when they
still exist; for these are the teachers our grandchildren have been waiting for
(perhaps unbeknownst to them) to reconstruct a livable planet.
Paradoxically, this knowledge only comes to us if it is not coveted. It
cannot be “gotten,” taken, owned. It requires a radical transformation of our
thinking literally from the ground up that revolves around one fundamental
value: nature and its dwellers are not property. The same can be said of the
knowledges and values systems that promise to repair this planet. They
cannot be owned or extracted for profit. We must unlearn the lessons of
colonialism even in the act of dismantling it.
What might it mean, to wait actively, to begin to listen attentively to
the so-called “nobodies” of the world, the unnoticed in Anzaldúa’s “Mundo
Zurdo,” to those brothers trapped in 115-degree heat waves in Washington
State prisons, to teachers with the gift of tongues in revolt that might send
us marching into an engaged life of critical consciousness? No short cuts,
no more Facebook quarrels, no gossip, but employing language that strives
to express what is wholly known in the body. Today I understand the true
porousness of the border by the Indigenous bodies that insist on breaking
through it.
I think this remains the very heart of Bridge’s intention: that we have
to keep looking to our home grounds to find the road back to values that
promise to slow the glacier’s meltdown and the spread of the next virus.
From that place, we skill-build our weaponry toward what we understand as
our calling and our work, the hard connective labor of coalition,
compassion, and consciousness in a radically renewed social order of a
globalized world.

Recognizing the ephemerality of a lifetime (long and short), my hope is that

you, the new or returning reader to This Bridge Called My Back, might
glimpse the aspirational intention in the lines and lives of each Bridge
contributor, many writing at the very pinnacle of their own politicization as
women of color within the context of a burgeoning feminist of color
movement in the late 1970s into the 1980s. My hope is that you might see
yourselves and the promise of your own radicalization reflected in their
principles, poetry, and passion for change.
Old radical ways and concepts return to me from my own forty-plus
years of social and political engagement: consciousness-raising groups,
criticism/self-criticism, universities without walls; writing pen-to-page and
dating face-to-face. Liberation Theology. Engels’s The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and the State. The Buddhist concept of “relative
truth.” It seems that each of us moves forward by what touches and stays
with us; what agitates us into action.
The world is not an accident as long as we strive to draw meaning
from it and in so doing act upon it with courage and grace.
As the years pass, Bridge will continue to reflect a longer and living
history, even as we, its aging contributors, join the company of our ancestor
predecessors. But you, we, are all present in this book—looking back and
forward.
And so, I end this writing where we began, with an honoring of our
ancestors.
What follows is a short list of women of color activists, writers, and
artists4—some recognizable to many, some less so. But they were there,
contributors to Bridge’s vision by their own concurrent life practice. And
that has got to be enough.
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982). Korean American avant-garde
novelist and filmmaker; best known for her 1982 novel, Dictee. Cha
was raped and murdered one week after her book’s publication.
Victoria Mercado (1951–1982). Chicana labor union activist,
comunista; died in what was believed to be a politically motivated
murder.
Ana Mendieta (1948–1985). Early feminist Cuban American visual
and performance artist; sculptor. Her art reflected an intimate
relationship with nature, especially that of the landscape of Cuba.
Her death was believed to be a domestic homicide.
Mabel Hampton (1902–1989). African American lesbian; a dancer
during the Harlem Renaissance; volunteer at the Lesbian Herstory
Archives (NYC).
Marsha Gómez (1951–1998). Choctaw/Chicana; a potter of great craft
and passion for Madre Tierra; longtime director of Alma de Mujer, a
retreat center outside of Austin, and a board member of the
Indigenous Women’s Network; murdered by her son, suffering
schizophrenia.
Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa/Flying Eagle Woman (1957–1999).
Menominee international activist for the sovereign rights and
education of Indigenous peoples; was kidnapped and murdered by
FARC guerrillas while en route to work with the U’wa People of
Colombia.
Sandra Camacho (1960–2004). Nuyorican lesbian feminist women of
color organizer; co-coordinator of New York Women Against Rape
in the 1980s.
Barbara Christian (1943–2000). Caribbean-born; first Black woman to
be granted tenure at UC Berkeley in 1978; produced multiple
seminal works on Black women’s literatures.
Patsy Mink (1927–2002). Sansei (third-generation) Japanese
American; Democratic congresswoman for Hawaii; coauthored Title
IX Amendment of the Higher Education Act.
June Jordan (1936–2002). Harlem-born, Jamaican American “Poet for
the People”; activist, essayist, and professor with over thirty years of
politically engaged, powerfully rendered writings.
Sylvia Rivera (1951–2002). Radical Latina Transgender Rights
activist; participated in the Stonewall Uprising; in 2002 the Sylvia
Rivera Law Project was founded in her honor.
Octavia Butler (1947–2006). African American science fiction author.
Parable of the Sower offers a new way to be in the world.
VèVè Amasasa Clark (1944–2007). Clark’s scholarship, teaching, and
service reflect her passionate commitment to the field of African
American and African Diaspora studies.
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008). Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico;
prolific poet and scholar of Native American Women’s Spirituality,
most significantly The Sacred Hoop.
Elena Avila (1944–2011). New Mexican curandera and spiritual
consejera; practitioner of “medicine of the people”; author of
Woman Who Glows in the Dark.
Yuri Kochiyama (1921–2014). Japanese American lifetime activist in
Asian American, Black, and Third World movements, as well as
antiwar and Puerto Rican Independence struggles.
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018). Author of the choreopoem For Colored
Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
One of the first to speak out as a public writer on violence against
Black women within the Black community.
Toni Morrison (1931–2019). Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1993; author of Sula, Beloved, Song of Solomon, and many more
works of incomparable beauty and a complex comprehension of
Black American lives and histories.
Uzuri Amini Iya Oshogbo (1954–2018). African American lesbian
poet and priestess of Oshun, who specialized in healing women
survivors of sexual abuse.
Emma Amos (1937–2020). Incomparable and acclaimed African
American figurative painter, printmaker, and weaver; arts activist.
Nawal El Saadawi (1931–2021). Egyptian feminist writer, activist, and
physician; a prolific writer and advocate for women in the Arab
world; especially notable—Women and Sex (1969), which was
banned in Egypt for almost two decades.

Also, in acknowledgment of all those unnamed,

 we wish our sisters liberation
in the wellspring of zero,
we wish them life.
8 july 2021

Notes
1. Toni Cade Bambara, foreword to the first edition of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color, xxxvii, this volume.
2. The accent refers to América North, South, Central and the Caribbean.
3. questions grow deeper and more silenced
4. This list, neither definitive nor representative, contains very abbreviated descriptions but reflects
women who came to mind in writing and were also suggested to me by several Bridge writers
who responded to my inquiry. I encourage you to find out more about their remarkable lives.
 Editor’s Note

In this edition, we regrettably were not able to secure permission to

republish hattie gosset’s two essays, which had appeared in earlier editions:
“billie lives! billie lives” and “who told you anybody wants to hear from
you? you ain’t nothing but a black woman.” Gratefully, however, we were
able to include additional poems by Kate Rushin, which pay tribute to
women of color and their work—those “Back-Ups … my mama and your
mama” (80) who have made our writings and art possible.

Agradecimientos. Thank you to our literary representative, Stuart

Bernstein, who was critical to the successful recompilation of the 2015
edition of Bridge. After over a decade of being out-of-print, Stuart’s good
faith, tenacity, and calm heart were foundational to the book’s relaunch.
Gracias to all of the production and marketing folks at SUNY Press,
especially the ever-present patience of Diane Ganeles and her team, and the
support of Beth Bouloukos and Kate Seburyamo. We also thank Larin
McLaughlin, who made the initial efforts of acquiring Bridge for SUNY
Press. Additional thanks are in order for the team that helped produce this
fortieth anniversary edition. They are: Timothy Stookesberry, Rebecca
Colesworthy, Sharla Clute, James Peltz, and Michael Campochiaro.
My gratitude goes, as always, to AnaLouise Keating (of The Gloria E.
Anzaldúa Literary Trust) for her continued dedication to Gloria’s vision.
Finally, deep thanks a mi compañera por vida, Celia Herrera Rodríguez, as
daily and righteous witness to our shared labors of love.
 Acts of Healing

Gloria Anzaldúa

A lot of women are talking about all this radical stuff, but when it comes to be it will scare
the shit out of them.
—Gloria Anzaldúa

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa believed that This Bridge should be published

by a large, mainstream press in order to give it visibility, sustainability, and
a wide audience. The Anzaldúa Trust is confident that Anzaldúa would be
pleased with the additional possibilities this publication promises. As the
following previously unpublished material, drawn from a 1983 Bridge
preface draft titled “And not acts of killing but of healing” indicates,
Anzaldúa viewed This Bridge as part of an ongoing, planetary
transformational project.
—The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Literary Trust

Before turning our eyes “forward” let’s cast a look at the roads that led us
here. The paths we’ve traveled on have been rocky and thorny, and no
doubt they will continue to be so. But instead of the rocks and the thorns,
we want to concentrate on the rain and the sunlight and the spider webs
glistening on both. Some of you, like us, are up to here with the chorus of
laments whose chief chant is “I’m more poor, more oppressed than you,”
who give suffering and pain more merit than laughter and health. And yes,
we intimately know the origins of oppression; it brewed in our beds, tables,
and streets; screaming out in anger is a necessary stage in our evolution into
freedom, but do we have to dwell forever on that piece of terrain, forever
stuck in the middle of that bridge? This land of thorns is not habitable. We
carry this bridge inside us, the struggle, the movement toward liberation.
No doubt all of us have found by now that you don’t build bridges by
storming walls—that only puts people’s backs up.
Not acts of barging in the door and ramming our ideologies down
people’s throats but of turning away, walking away from those who are not
yet ready to hear us, who perhaps can never hear us. To stand our ground
with those who look us in the eye, to wait for that glimmer of recognition to
pass between us, to let the force of our being penetrate the other with
gentleness. Touching is an act of making love, and if political touching is
not made with love no connections, no linkings happen.
We each are our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers; no one is an island or
has ever been. Every person, animal, plant, stone is interconnected in a life-
and-death symbiosis. We are each responsible for what is happening down
the street, south of the border or across the sea. And those of us who have
more of anything—more brains, more physical strength, more political
power, more money, or more spiritual energies—must give or exchange
with those who don’t have these energies but may have other things to give.
It is the responsibility of some of us who tap the vast source of
spiritual/political energies to help heal others, to put down a drawbridge; at
the same time we must depend more and more on our own sources for
survival. Ayudar a las mujeres que todavía viven en la jaula dar nuevos
pasos y a romper barreras antiguas. (To help women who still live in cages
to take new steps, and to break old barriers.)
 Catching Fire
Introduction, 2015

Cherríe Moraga

Egypt is burning
bonfires of celebration
ignited with the tinder
of that first
single
enflamed body
Tunisia.

!Sí! !Se puede!

The MeXicana1 mantra rises to my lips.
We look across oceans
for hope.

When I first began to consider a preface to the 4th edition of This Bridge
Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, these opening lines
came to me. I wrote them at a moment in history when progressive
revolution seemed possible. I remember that February nearly four years
ago, watching the late night news, during the eighteen days of revolt in
Tahrir Square, scanning the faces of protesters, searching for visual signs of
sisters amid the fervent masses of men. I spy the hijab; swatches of dark
fabric and multicolored pastel blend among the hundreds of thousands. I
press my ear to an Al Jazeera radio broadcast, “Hosni Mubarak steps
down!” And I hear a woman’s voice, “I have worked for this my whole
life.” She is crying and I am crying because her victory is mine. To view the
world today through a feminist of color lens shatters all barriers of state-
imposed nationality. The Egyptian revolution is my revolution!

The first edition of This Bridge Called My Back was collectively penned
nearly thirty-five years ago with a similar hope for revolutionary solidarity.
For the first time in the United States, women of color, who had been
historically denied a shared political voice, endeavored to create bridges of
consciousness through the exploration, in print, of their diverse classes,
cultures and sexualities. Thirty-five years ago was before Facebook, before
Twitter, before cell phones, fax machines, before home computers and the
internet. Thirty-five years ago, Egypt, Afghanistan, Nigeria seemed very far
away. They are no longer so far.
Over those three and a half decades, the writers herein have grown
much older as the proximity of “foreign” nations has grown much closer
through technology and globalization, bringing millions of new immigrants
to the United States, especially from Western and South Asia and the
América just south of us. Bridge’s original political conception of “US
women of color” as primarily including Chinese, Japanese, and Filipina
American, Chicana/Latina, Native and African American, has now evolved
into a transnational and increasingly complex movement of women today,
whose origins reside in Asia, throughout the global south and in Indigenous
North America.
The prism of a US Third World Feminist consciousness has shifted as
we turned our gaze away from a feminism prescribed by white women of
privilege (even in opposition to them) and turned toward the process of
discerning the multilayered and intersecting sites of identity and struggle—
distinct and shared—among women of color across the globe. In recent
years, even our understanding of how gender and “womanhood” are defined
has been challenged by young trans women and men of color. They’ve
required us to look more deeply into some of our fiercest feminist
convictions about queer desire and female identity. Thirty-five years later,
Bridge contributor Anita Valerio is now Max Wolf Valerio. His very
presence in this collection attests to the human truth of our evolving lives
and the “two spirits” of our consciousness.
 Dated as it is, I am honored to re-introduce this collection of 1981
testimonies for the very reason that it is, in fact, dated; marked by the hour
and place of these writers’ and artists’ births, our geographies of dislocation
and homecoming, the ancestral memory that comes with us, and the politics
of the period that shaped us.
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido. The people united will never be
defeated.

I believed that once with a profound passion, remembering my

youthful political optimism in the 1970s and into the eighties; the
progressive political climate that gave birth to Bridge; that contagious
solidarity among women and people of color movements in the United
States and with our camaradas throughout Latin America and the rest of the
Third World.2 And then suddenly, and throughout the ensuing decades, we
saw our dreams dashed over and over again:

the United States’ three-decade history of invasion—Grenada,

Panama, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq;
the federal response to the AIDS pandemic and to the
disproportionate loss of a whole generation of queer men of color,
and of the women of color who died in the wake of that
generation;
the CIA’s role in dismantling the Sandinista People’s revolution in
Nicaragua and the ouster of democratically elected Aristide in
Haiti;
NAFTA’s binational betrayal of the Mexican worker and FEMA’s
betrayal of Katrina-devastated Africa America;
the endemic alienation of middle-class youth erupting in the
tragedies of the Columbine shooting, the Virginia Tech Massacre;
and Sandy Hook Elementary;
the brown children left behind through the Bush administration’s
“No Child Left Behind”;
the Supreme Court’s removal of the ban on political spending by
corporations in 2010;
the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013;
 the rise in anti-abortion violence and the constant erosion of
women’s right to choose;
the Tea Party
the USA Patriot Act;
and the apartheid state of Arizona.

Assessing the conditions of our lives in the United States since the
original publication of This Bridge Called My Back, it appears that today
our identities are shaped less by an engaged democratic citizenship and
more by our role as consumers. The two major crises that the United States
experienced within its shores in the previous decade—9/11 and the
economic depression—were generated by the same corporate greed that
legislates an oil-ravenous and dangerous foreign policy in the Middle East.
And … We. Keep. “Buying” it.
Nationally, grassroots feminists continue to be undermined by single-
issue liberals who believe that by breaking a class-entitled glass ceiling
—“beating the boys at their own game”—there is some kind of “trickle
down” effect on the actual lives of working-class and poor women and
children. This is the same “trickle down” of our share of corporate profit,
secured by tax benefits for the wealthy, that has yet to land on our kitchen
tables, our paychecks, or our children’s public school educations. Social
change does not occur through tokenism or exceptions to the rule of
discrimination, but through the systemic abolishment of the rule itself.
Is this the American Dream deferred?
What does happen to a “dream deferred”?
Does it explode, as Langston Hughes suggests?
Egypt exploded.

And, now what?

Entering the second decade of the 21st century, political currents begin
to shift. We witness Twitter-instigated town square rebellions and
WikiLeaks assumes the role of an international free press. Progressive
movements—those “rolling rebellions” of the Middle East and North Africa
—roll across the ocean to break onto US shores in a way that my 1981
twenty-something imagination could never have foreseen.3
In response to the federal government’s “bailout” betrayal of its
citizens, the Occupy movement and its slogan of “we are the 99%” spilled
onto Wall Street and onto the Main Streets of this country, spreading the
dirtiest five-letter word in “America”: C-L-A-S-S. The Emperor’s
nakedness had been revealed: the United States is a class-based society,
with an absolutely unconscionable unequal distribution of wealth and
resources upheld by our government. For that revelation alone, in that it
inspired a critical view of class inequity in this country, I am beholden to
the Occupy movement, misnomered as it is.4 Although women of color and
working-class people were not represented there in large numbers, these
activists, of some social privilege, publicly (and en masse) acknowledged
that they were being bamboozled by their own government. Just like us.
This is what the “Occupy” movement proffered, the possibility of a one-day
aligned oppositional movement.
What would it mean for progressive struggles like Occupy to truly
integrate a feminist of color politic in everything from climate change to the
dissolution of the World Bank? It is not always a matter of the actual bodies
in the room, but of a life dedicated to a growing awareness of who and what
is missing in that room; and responding to that absence. What ideas never
surface because we imagine we already have all the answers? Patriarchy
and white privilege can so seamlessly disguise ignorances that later become
the Achilles heel of many progressive organizations, leading to their
demise.
Currently, at a grassroots level, the Climate Change movement is
forced to take note, as Native women in Canada wage local and
international protests against the tar sands industry. Truly radical
environmentalists are beginning to recognize that—without the counsel and
active engagement of people of color, whose homes “neighbor” the majority
of dumping sites in the United States; without the leadership models of
traditional and innovative Indigenous practices of sustainability; and,
without the organized outcry of mothers, who personally suffer the illness
of their children due to environmental contamination—no mass movement
to literally “save our planet” can occur.5
I was twenty-seven years old when Gloria Anzaldúa and I entered upon the
project of This Bridge Called My Back. I am now sixty-two. As I age, I
watch the divide between generations widen with time and technology. I
watch how desperately we need political memory, so that we are not always
imagining ourselves the ever-inventors of our revolution; so that we are
humbled by the valiant efforts of our foremothers; and so, with humility and
a firm foothold in history, we can enter upon an informed and re-envisioned
strategy for social/political change in decades ahead.
Bridge is an account of US women of color coming to late 20th century
social consciousness through conflict—familial and institutional—and
arriving at a politic, a “theory in the flesh” (19), that makes sense of the
seeming paradoxes of our lives; that complex confluence of identities—
race, class, gender, sexuality—systemic to women of color oppression and
liberation. At home, amongst ourselves, women of color ask the political
question: what about us? Which really means: what about all of us?
Combahee River Collective writes: If Black [Indigenous]6 women were
free … everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would
necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression” (217).
We are “third world” consciousness within the first world. We are
women under capitalist patriarchy. We can impact United States foreign and
domestic policy as union members, as organized domestic and service
workers, as community farmers, as sex worker advocates and Native water
rights activists, as student protesters and street protesters, as mountain-top
mining resisters, as migrant workers and migrant rights workers, as public
health care providers, as single mothers really raising our kids, and as
academics really decolonizing young minds. We do all this in concert with
women across the globe pursuing the same goals: a shared and thriving
existence in a world where our leaders have for the most part abandoned us
and on a planet on the brink of utter abandonment.
Is not the United States’ delayed and “party-politics” response to the
Ebola virus plagued with “exceptionalism” and xenophobia? Africa is not
us, America lies. But, as women of color, how are we to look away from the
mirror of the Monrovian mother sitting stunned and broken by the small
heap of crumbled cloth that is her now dead daughter?7 It is not so far away.
Global warming. Campus rape. “Dead Man Walking while Black” on
the Ferguson Streets of the USA. Somehow all these concerns reside within
the politic of women of color feminism; for it is a political practice that is
shaped first from the specific economic conditions and the cultural context
of our own landbase—from the inner-city barrio to the reservation; from the
middleamerica suburb to the Purépeha village transplanted to the state of
Oregon; and, fundamentally, to a dangeously threatened Earth.
Daily, Indigenous relatives from the south are left splayed and
bleeding across the barbed wire of a border, “defended” by United States
amory, wielded by border patrol and drug cartels. Anti-immigrant racism
fuels Congress’s policies of violent discrimination against Raza, funding the
“round-up” of undocumented immigrants and sequestering them into
“family detention centers.” Our own Bridge contributor, Mitsuye Yamada
(now, 91), could attest to the terrible familiarity of the times, remembering
how—nearly seventy-five years ago—she and her family were among the
120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes and sent to
internment camps during World War II. “Invisibility Is an Unnatural
Disaster” (30); and visibility, the most effective strategy to quell the rising
tide of discrimination.
In 2010, Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation8 sparked a swelling and
ongoing resistance movement, distinguished by the visible participation and
leadership of mujeres and undocumented queers. Gay and lesbian
guatemaltecas, salvadoreños, mexicanas y más helped force the Immigrant
Rights movement into the national public eye through courageous acts of
civil disobedience, risking jail and deportation. And they also made
publicly evident that “coming out of the closet”/“salir de las sombras” is not
a single issue. The Undocuqueer movement reflects the “simultaneity of
oppression,”9 foundational to women of color feminism: that the queer
daughters and sons of domestic workers, farmworkers, and day-laborers can
fight for their familias’ rights, without compromise to the whole of their
own identities. The political is profoundly personal.

This Bridge Called My Back is less about each one of us and much more
about the pending promise inscribed by all of us who believe that revolution
—physical and metaphysical at once—is possible. Many women of my
generation came to that belief based on the empowering historical
conditions of our early years. The African Independence movements of the
early 1960s, the Cuban Revolution, the Civil Rights movement, the
American Indian, Black Power and Chicano movements, the anti-
(Vietnam) war movement, Women’s and Gay Liberation—all laid political
ground and theoretical framework for a late 1970s feminism of color; as did
so much of the concurrent radical literature of the period (The Wretched of
the Earth, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, The Open Veins of Latin America,
The Red Stockings Manifesto, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Bury My
Heart at Wounded Knee, The Dialectic of Sex, El Plan Espiritual de
Aztlán …).
Ten years before the publication of Bridge, the Third World Women’s
Alliance had already begun publishing its Triple Jeopardy newspaper,
linking “Racism, Imperialism and Sexism” to domestic worker and welfare
rights, the political prisoner movement, the sterilization of Black and Puerto
Rican women, reproductive rights, and the liberation of Palestine. In 1981,
we were the inheritors of that vision. And it is my hope that the young
readers of this fourth edition of Bridge will be the inheritors of ours,
informed by a twenty-first-century perspective of mind and heart.
What brought me to feminism almost forty years ago was “heart.”
Feminism allowed “heart” to matter. It acknowledged that the oppression
we experienced as human beings was not always materially manifested, and
that we also suffered spiritually and sexually. Women of color have
traditionally served as the gateways—the knowledge-holders—to those
profoundly silent areas of expression and oppression: domestic abuse
aggravated by poverty, patriarchal strictures that distort the “spirit” of
religious practice; false familial hierarchies that deform our children’s
potential; erotic desire deadened by duty.
Such suffering is experienced by both males and females (not
proportionately, but mutually). Women of color feminists see our movement
as necessary for the liberation of men of color as well: liberation from war,
from greed, from the theft of our neighborhoods, and from men’s
destructive alienation from women and nature. This is no “stand by your
man” liberal feminism, but one that requires intra-cultural conversation and
confrontation in order to build an unyielding platform of equity among us.
Without the yoke of sexism and queer-phobias, we might finally be able to
build a united front against the myriad forms of racism we experience.
In the twenty years that Bridge stayed in, and went out of, publication over
100,000 copies were sold. It has also been read by thousands more. Early
edition copies, dog-eared and coffee-stained, have been passed from hand to
hand, borrowed then borrowed again, and “liberated” from library shelves.
Often referred to by its believers as the “bible” of women of color
feminism, it has been pirated online for two hundred dollars a copy,
reprinted in university course readers (with and without permission), PDF’d
and copied, pressing its yellowing pages against the xerox machine glass to
capture in print that Kate Rushin “Bridge” poem, that “essay about growing
up on the rez” (Barbara Cameron), or “that Asian American woman’s letter
to her mom” (Merle Woo). So, in many ways, Bridge has already fulfilled
its original mission: to find its way into “every major city and hole in the
wall in this country.”10
From a teaching perspective, Bridge documents the living experience
of what academics now refer to as “intersectionality,” where multiple
identities converge at the crossroads of a woman of color life. The woman
of color life is the crossroad, where no aspect of our identity is wholly
dismissed from our consciousness, even as we navigate a daily shifting
political landscape. In many ways Bridge catalyzed the reconstitution of
Women & Gender and Ethnic Studies programs throughout the country.
After Bridge, “the race of gender and the gender of race” could no longer be
overlooked in any academic area or political organization that claimed to be
about Women or Ethnicity. Still, the “holes in walls” of our thinking remain
wide and many and there is an abundant amount of “bridging” left to be
done.

As I write this, wars rage against women of color nationally and

internationally: the epidemic of mass rapes of women in Congo; the brutal
slaughter of thousands of women and girls (mostly unreported) in that
transnational desert of despair, Juárez, Mexico; the abduction of hundreds
of Nigerian school girls into a life of sexual enslavement, as ISIL barters
Yazidi females into forced marriages and religious conversions. Closer to
home, the news of rising incidents of sexual assault on college campuses
and inside the neocolony of United States reservation system begins to
break through a wall of fierce censorship. Native women speak out. It is not
always safe to do so.
Even among the community of Bridge, the premature (and in some
cases, violent) deaths of so many of the book’s contributors testify to the
undisputable fact of the daily threat to women of color lives. It also speaks
to the profound costs of just being us: visible women of color artists and
activists suffering disabling illnesses; single mothers and grandmothers,
queer women, raising our children’s children, while relegated to the margins
of our own communities. “Stress” is too benign a term.

With the publication of this fourth edition, we call out the names of the
dead. Co-editor Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004) is the first to cross our lips,
as it was she who held the first kernel of thought for this book in 1979. As
the years pass, we will follow Gloria, as Rosario Morales (2011) followed
her, and as Gloria followed Barbara Cameron (2002), Toni Cade Bambara
(1995), Audre Lorde (1992), and Pat Parker (1989).
The artwork in this collection tells a parallel story. Bridge’s opening
image “Omecihuatl,” by Celia Herrera Rodríguez, depicts the goddess-
virgin’s face as that of Chicana union activist and lesbian Victoria Mercado,
murdered in 1982 in a politically-motivated assault. Bridge concludes with
a similar refrain in the 1974 image from “Body Tracks,” by Cuban-born
New York conceptual artist Ana Mendieta, who “fell” from a window to her
death in 1985.11
In the face of world-wide misogynist atrocities and intimate violences,
we cannot escape recurring self-doubts about the actual power of our acts of
resistance against global patriarchy. I admit I have long days of doubt.
Perhaps it’s my age, the knowledge of the lengthening list of
sisters/compañeras who’ve passed, and the sense of my own diminishing
years. As so many others have said before me, I don’t imagine I will live to
see the revolution. I smile at the arrogance of this; that we imagine that our
work begins and ends with us.
Still, here, in the underbelly of the “first” world, women of color writing is
one liberation tool at our disposal. History is always in the making; while
women of color and Indigenous peoples remain wordless in the official
record. The very act of writing then, conjuring/coming to “see,” what has
yet to be recorded in history is to bring into consciousness what only the
body knows to be true. The body—that site which houses the intuitive, the
unspoken, the viscera of our being—this is the revolutionary promise of
“theory in the flesh”; for it is both the expression of evolving political
consciousness and the creator of consciousness, itself. Seldom recorded and
hardly honored, our theory incarnate provides the most reliable roadmap to
liberation.
So, let then this thirty-five-year-old document, This Bridge Called My
Back, this living testimony of women of color epiphanies of political
awakening, become part of the unofficial and truer record; an archive of
accounts of those first ruptures of consciencia where we turned and looked
at one another across culture, color and class difference to share an origin
story of displacement in a nation never fully home to us.

Ultimately, as all people of progressive politic do, we wrote this book for
you—the next generation, and the next one. Your lives are so vast before
you—you whom the popular culture has impassively termed “Millennials.”
But I think the women of Bridge would’ve simply called you “familia”—
our progeny, entrusting you with the legacy of our thoughts and activisms,
in order to better grow them into a flourishing planet and a just world.
“Refugees of a world on Fire.” This is how I understood US woman of
color citizenship in the early 1980s. Perhaps the naming is now more apt
than ever. Ours is a freedom movement that has yet to be fully realized, but
it was promised among those women in the streets of an enflamed and now
smoldering Cairo. It is also promised in the spirit of those young people
who may first pick up this collection of poems, protests, and prayers and
suddenly, without warning, feel their own consciousness catch fire.

In honor of the legacy of Mahsa Shekarloo.12

5 noviembre 2014
 Notes
1. “MeXicana” is feminine here in honor of Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm
Workers. She first coined the phrase “¡Sí! ¡Se puede!” (“Yes, we can!”) as a call to activism
during El Movimiento of the 1960s.
2. As women (people) of color in the United States, we also used “Third World” to align ourselves
with countries bearing colonial histories and still suffering their effects, much of today’s global
south. We saw ourselves as “internally” colonized in the United States.
3. I also could not have imagined how the vision of those popular rebellions would become so
sabotaged by the escalation of violent conflict now being visited upon the peoples of the region;
the USA having had no small hand in its creation.
4. From a Third World perspective “occupy” is what the colonizer does; that is, he settles on land
that does not belong to him. For that reason, we state that Xicanos and other Indigenous peoples
live in “Occupied América” (Rodolfo Acuña).
5. The ongoing campaign led by the Mexican Mothers of Kettleman City against the toxic waste
dump in their San Joaquin Valley town is a notable example. Also, for more
information/reflection on Native-based environmental sustainability, see the writings of Winona
LaDuke (Anishinaabekwe [Ojibwe]; visit: www.honorearth.org.
6. Black women are Indigenous women, once forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland. If
not in the specifics, the major ideological tenets of the 1977 Combahee River Collective
statement can serve today as a treatise for Indigenous women’s rights movements globally.
7. Hawa Konneh was her name. The image appeared in Time, August 25, 1914.
8. S.B. 1070. One of the harshest and most extensive anti-immigrant bills in the recent history
violated the constitutional and human rights of undocumented immigrants, while “racially
profiling” anyone who looked like them.
9. Comhahee River Collective.
10. From the 1981 introduction to Bridge, reprinted in this volume.
11. There had been strong evidence in and out of court to convict Mendieta’s husband, a world-
renown artist, of her murder, but he was exonerated. Of Mendieta’s “Body Tracks” Celia
Herrera Rodríguez writes: “the bloodied hand and arm tracks descending to the ground [are] a
reminder that this path is dangerous and many have fallen” (Bridge, 3nd edition, 281).
12. My beloved friend Mahsa Shekarloo was an Iranian-American transnational feminist and a
Tehran-based activist for the rights of women and children. She was also an editor, and the
founder of the online feminist journal Bad Jens. In fall 2012, upon the news of her cancer,
Mahsa returned from Tehran to her family’s home in Oakland. After a two-year struggle, she left
this life on September 5, 2014. She was forty-four years old, and the mother of a six-year-old
son. An emergent and eloquent writer, Mahsa, and what would have been her future works, will
be deeply missed.
 Foreword to the First Edition, 1981

Toni Cade Bambara

How I cherish this collection of cables, esoesses, conjurations and fusil

missiles. Its motive force. Its gathering-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
Puertoriqueña reservation Chicana campañera 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 western-european 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: US
a new set of recognitions: US
a new site of accountability: US
a new source of power: 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 onto a new place
where stooped labor cramped quartered down pressed 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
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 us 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 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 campfire, the answers in our laps, knowing how
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 blue-prints 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,
multimedia arts troupe, a call to unite our wrath, 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!1

Note
1. “In Search of the Mother Tongue: An Interview with Toni Cade Bambara,” First World Journal
(Fall 1980).
The Bridge Poem
Kate Rushin

I’ve had enough

I’m sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister

My little sister to my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends’ parents …

Then
I’ve got to explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn UN

Forget it
I’m sick of it

I’m sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against

The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world

Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood

Your manhood
Your human-ness

I’m sick of reminding you not to

Close off too tight for too long

I’m sick of mediating with your worst self

Oh behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be

Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere

But my true self
And then
I will be useful
 La Jornada
Preface, 1981

Cherríe Moraga

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

(Boston, 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 is still not completed, and I have
traveled East to find it a publisher. Such an anthology is in high demand
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.
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.
I 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’s1. … 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. 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.
And 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, colored2 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 straightjackets of poverty and repression I saw in my own
family. But the deepest political tragedy I have experienced is how with
such grace, such blind faith, this commitment to women 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 that
can finally, as my friend Amber Hollibaugh states, “ask the right questions
and admit to not having all the answers.”

A Bridge Gets Walked Over

(Boston, Massachusetts—July 25, 1980)

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. They 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, Cherríe. 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!”

A Place of Breakthrough: Coming Home

(San Francisco, California—September 20, 1980)

When Audre Lorde, speaking of racism, states: “I urge each one of us here
to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch
that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there.”3 I am driven to
do so because of the passion for women that lives in my body. I know now
that the major obstacle for me, personally, in completing this book has
occurred when I stopped writing it for myself, when I looked away from my
own source of knowledge.
Audre is right. It is also the source of terror—how deeply separation
between women hurts me. How discovering difference, profound
differences between myself and women I love has sometimes rendered me
helpless and immobilized.
I think of my sister here. How I still haven’t gotten over the shock that
she would marry a white man, rather than enter onto the journey I knew I
was taking. (This is the model we have from my mother, nurturing/waiting
on my father and brother all the days of her life. Always how if a man
walked into the room, he was paid attention to [indulged] in a particular
Latin-woman-to-man way). For years, and to this day, I am still recovering
from the disappointment that this girl/this sister who had been with me
every day of my life growing up—who slept, ate, talked, cried, worked,
fought with me—was suddenly lost to me through this man and marriage. I
still struggle with believing I have a right to my feelings, that it is not
“immature” or “queer” to refuse such separations, to still mourn over this
early abandonment, “this homesickness for a woman.”4 So few people
really understand how deep the bond between sisters can run. I was raised
to rely on my sister, to believe sisters could be counted on “to go the long
hard way with you.”
Sometimes for me “that deep place of knowledge” Audre refers to
seems like an endless reservoir of pain, where I must continually unravel
the damage done to me. It is a calculated system of damage, intended to
ensure our separation from other women, but particularly those we learned
to see as most different from ourselves and therefore, most fearful. The
women whose pain we do not want to see as our own. Call it racism, class
oppression, men, or dyke-baiting, the system thrives.
I mourn the friends and lovers I have lost to this damage. I mourn the
women whom I have betrayed with my own ignorance, my own fear.
The year has been one of such deep damage. I have felt between my
hands the failure to bring a love I believed in back to life. Yes, the failure
between lovers, sisters, mother and daughter—the betrayal. How have we
turned our backs on each other—the bridge collapsing—whether it be for
public power, personal gain, private validation, or more closely, to save
face, to save our children, to save our skins.
“See whose face it wears,”5 Audre says. And I know I must open my
eyes and mouth and hands to name the color and texture of my fear.
I had nearly forgotten why I was so driven to work on this anthology. I
had nearly forgotten that I wanted/needed to deal with racism because I
couldn’t stand being separated from other women. Because I took my
lesbianism that seriously. I first felt this the most acutely with Black women
—Black dykes—who I felt ignored me, wrote me off because I looked
white. And yet, the truth was that I didn’t know Black women intimately
(Barbara says “it’s about who you can sit down to a meal with, who you can
cry with, whose face you can touch”). I had such strong “colored hunches”
about our potential connection, but was basically removed from the lives of
most Black women. The ignorance. The painful, painful ignorance.
I had even ignored my own bloodline connection with Chicanas and
other Latinas. Maybe it was too close to look at, too close to home. Months
ago in a journal entry I wrote: “I am afraid to get near to how deeply I want
the love of other Latin women in my life.” In a real visceral way I hadn’t
felt the absence (only assumed the fibers of alienation I so often felt with
anglo women as normative). Then for the first time, speaking on a panel
about racism here in San Francisco, I could physically touch what I had
been missing. There in the front row, nodding encouragement and
identification, sat five Latina sisters. Count them! Five avowed Latina
Feminists: Gloria, Jo, Aurora, Chabela y Mirtha. For once in my life every
part of me was allowed to be visible and spoken for in one room at one
time.
After the forum, the six of us walk down Valencia Street singing songs
in Spanish. We buy burritos y cerveza from “La Cumbre” and talk our
heads off into the night, crying from the impact of such a reunion.
Sí, son mis comadres. Something my mother had with her women
friends and sisters. Coming home. For once, I didn’t have to choose
between being a lesbian and being Chicana; between being a feminist and
having family.

I Have Dreamed of a Bridge

San Francisco, California—September 25, 1980

Literally, for two years now, I have dreamed of a bridge. In writing this
conclusion, I fight the myriad voices that live inside me. The voices that
stop my pen at every turn of the page. They are the voices that tell me here I
should be talking more “materialistically” about the oppression of women
of color, that I should be plotting out a “strategy” for Third World
Revolution. But what I really want to write about is faith. That without
faith, I’d dare not expose myself to the potential betrayal, rejection, and
failure that lives throughout the first and last gesture of connection.
And yet, so often I have lost touch with the simple faith I know in my
blood. My mother. On some very basic level, the woman cannot be shaken
from the ground on which she walks. Once at a very critical point in my
work on this book, where everything I loved—the people, the writing, the
city—all began to cave in on me, feeling such utter despair and self-doubt, I
received in the mail a card from my mother. A holy card of St. Anthony de
Padua, her patron saint, her “special” saint, wrapped in a plastic cover. She
wrote in it: “Dear Cherríe, I am sending you this prayer of St. Anthony.
Pray to God to help you with this book.” And a cry came up from inside me
that I had been sitting on for months, cleaning me out—a faith healer. Her
faith in this saint did actually once save her life. That day, it helped me
continue the labor of this book.
I am not talking here about some lazy faith, where we resign ourselves
to the tragic splittings in our lives with an upward turn of the hands or a
vicious beating of our breasts. I am talking about believing that we have the
power to actually transform our experience, change our lives, save our
lives. Otherwise, why this book? It is the faith of activists I am talking
about.
The materialism in this book lives in the flesh of these women’s lives:
the exhaustion we feel in our bones at the end of the day, the fire we feel in
our hearts when we are insulted, the knife we feel in our backs when we are
betrayed, the nausea we feel in our bellies when we are afraid, even the
hunger we feel between our hips when we long to be touched.
Our strategy is how we cope—how we measure and weigh what is to
be said and when, what is to be done and how, and to whom and to whom
and to whom, daily deciding/risking who it is we can call an ally, call a
friend (whatever that person’s skin, sex, or sexuality). We are women
without a line. We are women who contradict each other.
This book is written for all the women in it and all whose lives our
lives will touch. We are a family who first only knew each other in our
dreams, who have come together on these pages to make faith a reality and
to bring all of our selves to bear down hard on that reality.
It is about physical and psychic struggle. It is about intimacy, a desire
for life between all of us, not settling for less than freedom even in the most
private aspects of our lives. A total vision.
For the women in this book, I will lay my body down for that vision.
This Bridge Called My Back.
In the dream, I am always met at the river.

Notes
1. I want to acknowledge and thank Barbara Smith for her support as a sister, her insights as a
political activist and visionary, and especially for her way with words in helping me pull this
together.
2. Throughout the text, the word “colored” will be used by the editors as a way of talking amongst
ourselves (“entrenos”), in referring to all Third World people of color unless otherwise
 specified.
3. From “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (see her essay in this
volume).
4. Adrienne Rich, “Trancendental Etude,” The Dream of a Common Language (New York: Norton,
1978), 75.
5. From “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (see her essay in this
volume).
 Introduction, 1981

Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa

How It All Began

In February of 1979, Gloria attended a women’s retreat in the country just

north of San Francisco. At Merlin Stone’s insistence, three Third World
women were to receive scholarships to her workshop on goddesses and
heroines taking place during the retreat. Only one made it—Gloria. The
management and some of the staff made her feel an outsider, the poor
relative, the token woman of color. And all because she was not white nor
had she paid the $150 fee the retreat organizers had set for the workshop.
The seed that germinated into this anthology began there in Gloria’s talks
with Merlin.
What had happened at the women’s retreat was not new to our
experience. Both of us had first met each other working as the only two
Chicanas in a national feminist writers organization. After two years of
involvement with the group which repeatedly refused to address itself to its
elitist and racist practices, we left the organization and began work on this
book.
In April, 1979, we wrote:

We want to express to all women—especially to white middle-

class women—the experiences which divide us as feminists; we
want to examine incidents of intolerance, prejudice and denial of
differences within the feminist movement. We intend to explore
the causes and sources of, and solutions to, these divisions. We
 want to create a definition that expands what “feminist” means to
us.
(From the original soliciting letter)

The Living Entity

What began as a reaction to the racism of white feminists soon became a

positive affirmation of the commitment of women of color to our own
feminism. Mere words on a page began to transform themselves into a
living entity in our guts. Now, over a year later, feeling greater solidarity
with other feminists of color across the country through the making of this
book, we assert:
This Bridge Called My Back intends to reflect an uncompromised
definition of feminism by women of color in the US.
We named this anthology “radical” for we were interested in the
writings of women of color who want nothing short of a revolution in the
hands of women—who agree that that is the goal, no matter how we might
disagree about the getting there or the possibility of seeing it in our own
lifetimes. We use the term in its original form—stemming from the word
“root”—for our feminist politic emerges from the roots of both of our
cultural oppression and heritage.

The Parts of the Whole

The six sections of This Bridge Called My Back intend to reflect what we
feel to be the major areas of concern for Third World women in the US in
forming a broad-based political movement: 1) how visibility/invisibility as
women of color forms our radicalism; 2) the ways in which Third World
women derive a feminist political theory specifically from our
racial/cultural background and experience; 3) the destructive and
demoralizing effects of racism in the women’s movement; 4) the cultural,
class, and sexuality differences that divide women of color; 5) Third World
women’s writing as a tool for self-preservation and revolution; and 6) the
ways and means of a Third World feminist future.

The Writers and Their Work

The women in whose hands This Bridge Called My Back was wrought
identify as Third World women and/or women of color. Each woman
considers herself a feminist, but draws her feminism from the culture in
which she grew. Most of the women appearing in this book are first-
generation writers. Some of us do not see ourselves as writers, but pull the
pen across the page anyway or speak with the power of poets.
The selections in this anthology range from extemporaneous stream of
consciousness journal entries to well-thought-out theoretical statements;
from intimate letters to friends to full-scale public addresses. In addition,
the book includes poems and transcripts, personal conversations and
interviews. The works combined reflect a diversity of perspectives,
linguistic styles, and cultural tongues.
In editing the anthology, our primary commitment was to retaining this
diversity, as well as each writer’s especial voice and style. The book is
intended to reflect our color loud and clear, not tone it down. As editors we
sought out, and believe we found, non-rhetorical, highly personal chronicles
that present a political analysis in everyday terms.
In compiling the anthology, Cherríe was primarily responsible for the
thematic structure and organization of the book as a whole. She also wrote
the introductions to the first four sections of the book which cover 1) The
Roots of Our Radicalism; 2) Theory in the Flesh; 3) Racism in the Women’s
Movement; and 4) On Culture, Class, and Homophobia. Gloria wrote the
introductions to the final two sections of the book which explore The Third
World Woman Writer and The Vision of the Third World feminist. Together
as editors, we both bore the burden of the book (even more than we had
anticipated—this being our first attempt at such a project), not only doing
the proofreading and making editorial decisions, but also acting as a
telephone answering and courier service, PR persons and advertisers,
interviewers and transcribers, and even occasionally, muses for some of the
contributors during their sometimes rather painful “writing blocks.” Most
important, we saw our major role as editors being to encourage writers to
delve even more deeply into their lives, to make some meaning out of it for
themselves and their readers.

Time and Money

Many people have commented on the relative speed in which this book was
produced. In barely two years, the anthology grew from a seed of an idea to
a published work. True, everyone has worked fast, including the publishers.
The anthology was created with a sense of urgency. From the moment of its
conception, it was already long overdue. Two years ago when we started,
we knew it was a book that should already have been in our hands.
How do you concentrate on a project when you’re worried about
paying the rent? We have sorely learned why so few women of color
attempt this kind of project: no money to fall back on. In compiling this
book we both maintained two or more jobs just to keep the book and
ourselves alive. No time to write while waiting tables. No time for class
preparation, to read students’ papers, argue with your boss, have a love life
or eat a decent meal when the deadline must be met. No money to buy
stamps, to hire a lawyer “to go over the contract,” to engage an agent. Both
of us became expert jugglers of our energy and the few pennies in our
piggybanks: Gloria’s “little chicken” and Cherríe’s “tecate bucket.”

Agradecimientos

But oh there were the people who helped: Leslie, Abigail, Leigh and her
IBM selectric, Randy, David, Mirtha’s arroz con picadillo and loving
encouragement, Merlin and Adrienne’s faith in the book, Jane and Sally’s
letting Cherríe change her mind, our women’s studies students at San
Francisco State University who put up with their two over-tired grumpy
teachers, Debbie’s backrubs, Jo who typed the whole damn manuscript,
Barbara C. and her camera and crew, Barbara S.’s work in spreading the
word in Boston, the friends who lent us money, and all the other folks who
supported our readings, our benefit parties, our efforts to get this book to
press.
Most especially, of course, we wish to thank all the contributors whose
commitment and insight made the nightly marathons we spent pulling out
our hair worth it. They inspired the labor.

Putting Our Words into Practice

With the completion of this anthology, a hundred other books and projects
are waiting to be developed. Already, we hear tell in the wind from other
contributors the possibility of a film about Third World Feminists, an
anthology by Latina lesbians, a Third World feminist publishing house. We,
women of color, are not without plans. This is exactly the kind of service
we wish for the anthology to provide. It is a catalyst, not a definitive
statement on “Third World Feminism in the US.”
We see the book as a revolutionary tool falling into the hands of people
of all colors. Just as we have been radicalized in the process of compiling
this book, we hope it will radicalize others into action. We envision the
book being used as a required text in most women’s studies courses. And
we don’t mean just “special” courses on Third World Women or Racism,
but also courses dealing with sexual politics, feminist thought, women’s
spirituality, etc. Similarly, we want to see this book on the shelf of, and used
in the classroom by, every ethnic studies teacher in this country, male and
female alike. Off campus, we expect the book to function as a
consciousness-raiser for white women meeting together or working alone
on the issues of racism. And, we want to see our colored sisters using this
book as an educator and agitator around issues specific to our oppression as
women.
We want the book in libraries, bookstores, at conferences, and union
meetings in every major city and hole-in-the-wall in this country. And, of
course, we hope to eventually see this book translated and leave this
country, making tangible the link between Third World women in the US
and throughout the world.
Finally tenemos la esperanza que This Bridge Called My Back will
find its way back into our families’ lives.
The revolution begins at home.
 I

Children Passing in the Streets

The Roots of Our Radicalism
Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Mattie Looks for Steven Biko, 1985
Photocollage, 22″ × 24″
Collection of the Artist
Children Passing in the Streets
The Roots of Our Radicalism

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that

there is room for paradoxes.
—Maxine Hong Kingston1

We are women from all kinds of childhood streets: the farms of Puerto
Rico, the downtown streets of Chinatown, the barrio, city-Bronx streets,
quiet suburban sidewalks, the plains, and the reservation.
In this first section, you will find voices from childhoods, our youth.
What we learned about survival—trying-to-pass-for-white, easy-to-pass-
for-white, “she couldn’t pass in a million years.” Here, we introduce to you
the “color problem” as it was first introduced to us: “not white enuf, not
dark enuf,” always up against a color chart that first got erected far outside
our families and our neighborhoods, but which invaded them both with
systematic determination.
In speaking of color and class, Tillie Olsen once said: “There’s no such
thing as passing.”2 Here are women of every shade of color and grade of
class to prove that point. For although some of us traveled more easily from
street corner to corner than the sister whose color or poverty made her an
especially visible target to the violence on the street, all of us have been
victims of the invisible violation which happens indoors and inside
ourselves: the self-abnegation, the silence, the constant threat of cultural
obliteration.
We were born into colored homes. We grew up with the inherent
contradictions in the color spectrum right inside those homes: the lighter
sister, the mixed-blood cousin, being the darkest one in the family. It
doesn’t take many years to realize the privileges, or lack thereof, attached to
a particular shade of skin or texture of hair. It is this experience that moves
light-skinned or “passable” Third World women to put themselves on the
line for their darker sisters. We are all family. From those families we were
on the one hand encouraged to leave, to climb up white. And with the other
hand, the reins were held tight on us, our parents understanding the danger
that bordered our homes.
We learned to live with these contradictions. This is the root of our
radicalism.

Notes
1. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (New York: Vintage, 1977), 35.
2. From a talk given at The Women’s Building sponsored by The Feminist Writers’ Guild, San
Francisco, November 1979.
When I Was Growing Up
Nellie Wong

I know now that once I longed to be white.

How? you ask.
Let me tell you the ways.

when I was growing up, people told me

I was dark and I believed my own darkness
in the mirror, in my soul, my own narrow vision

when I was growing up, my sisters

with fair skin got praised
for their beauty, and in the dark
I fell further, crushed between high walls

when I was growing up, I read magazines

and saw movies, blonde movie stars, white skin,
sensuous lips and to be elevated, to become
a woman, a desirable woman, I began to wear
imaginary pale skin

when I was growing up, I was proud

of my English, my grammar, my spelling
fitting into the group of smart children
smart Chinese children, fitting in,
belonging, getting in line

when I was growing up and went to high school,

I discovered the rich white girls, a few yellow girls,
their imported cotton dresses, their cashmere
sweaters,
 their curly hair and I thought that I too should have
what these lucky girls had

when I was growing up, I hungered

for American food, American styles,
coded: white and even to me, a child
born of Chinese parents, being Chinese
was feeling foreign, was limiting,
was unAmerican

when I was growing up and a white man wanted

to take me out, I thought I was special,
an exotic gardenia, anxious to fit
the stereotype of an oriental chick

when I was growing up, I felt ashamed

of some yellow men, their small bones,
their frail bodies, their spitting
on the streets, their coughing,
their lying in sunless rooms,
shooting themselves in the arms

when I was growing up, people would ask

if I were Filipino, Polynesian, Portuguese.
They named all colors except white, the shell
of my soul, but not my dark, rough skin

when I was growing up, I felt

dirty. I thought that god
made white people clean
and no matter how much I bathed,
I could not change, I could not shed
my skin in the gray water

when I was growing up, I swore

I would run away to purple mountains,
houses by the sea with nothing over
my head, with space to breathe,
 uncongested with yellow people in an area
called Chinatown, in an area I later learned
was a ghetto, one of many hearts
of Asian America

I know now that once I longed to be white.

How many more ways? you ask.
Haven’t I told you enough?
on not bein
mary hope whitehead lee

be a smart child trying to be dumb …

not blk enuf to lovinly ignore …
not bitter enuf to die at a early age …
—ntozake shange1

she never wanted

no never once
did she wanna
be white/to pass
dreamed only of bein darker
she wanted to be darker
not yellow/not no high brown neither
but brown/warm brown
she dreamed/her body
moist earth brown
she prayed/for chocolate
semi/sweet/bitter/sweet
dark chocolate nipples crownin
her small chested tits
2 hersheys kisses
sittin sweet like top of
2 round scoops of smooth
milk chocolate ice cream

momma took her outta

almost all black lincoln high
cuz she useta catch hell
every day in gym class
the other girls reactin to her like
she was the cause of some
kinda gawdawful allergy they all had
contact could be fatal
survivors would be scarred
with kindness

cuz she wasn dark enuf

was smart enuf
wasn rowdy enuf
had a white girl friend
cuz none of them would be

beige or buff/ecru or chamois

jus wasn color/ed enuf
to get picked for the softball team
wasn sufficient protection
’gainst gettin’ tripped in the shower

she wondered/
would they have treated florence ballard
so shabbily

but she envied them all

felt every once now and then
they just mighta been
righteously justified
since/after all
they was brown like
the sun loved they skin special
cuz it warmed ’em

chestnut
bronze
 copper
sepia
cinnamon
cocoa
mahogany

her/she was drab faded out

yellow like a scorched july sky
just fore it rains & rinses
away the hint of brown from the smog

she wasn/
no maureen peal
no ‘high yellow dream child’
not/dichty
a hex muttered
not/hinkty
a curse let fly
not/saditty
like girls was spozed to be
did they went to catholic school or
was they from germantown or
baldwin hills or
valencia park

(the man she married/cuz he was the first one to ask/her bein afraid no body
else would/said he thought he was gonna hafta marry hisself white cuz/he
couldn find him no colored girl was/in-tel-li-gent e-nuf/but with her bein
the next best thing to white …

Note
1. Nappy Edges (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978).
For the Color of My Mother
Cherríe Moraga

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

at two
my upper lip split open
clear to the tip of my nose
it spilled forth a cry that would not yield
that traveled down six floors of hospital
where doctors wound me into white bandages
only the screaming mouth exposed

the gash sewn back into a snarl

would last for years

I am a white girl gone brown to the blood color of my mother

speaking for her

at five, her mouth

pressed into a seam
a fine blue child’s line drawn across her face
her mouth, pressed into mouthing english
mouthing yes yes yes
mouthing stoop lift carry
(sweating wet sighs into the field
her red bandana comes loose from under the huge brimmed
hat moving across her upper lip)
at fourteen, her mouth
painted, the ends drawn up
the mole in the corner colored in darker larger mouthing yes
she praying no no no
lips pursed and moving

at forty-five, her mouth

bleeding into her stomach
the hole gaping growing redder
deepening with my father’s pallor
finally stitched shut from hip to breastbone
an inverted V
Vera
Elvira

I am a white girl gone brown to the blood color of my mother

speaking for her

as it should be
dark women come to me
sitting in circles
I pass through their hands
the head of my mother
painted in clay colors

touching each carved feature

swollen eyes and mouth
they understand the explosion the splitting
open contained within the fixed expression

they cradle her silence

nodding to me
I Am What I Am
Rosario Morales

I am what I am and I am US American I haven’t wanted to say it because if

I did you’d take away the Puerto Rican but now I say go to hell I am what I
am and you can’t take it away with all the words and sneers at your
command I am what I am I am Puerto Rican I am US American I am New
York Manhattan and the Bronx I am what I am I’m not hiding under no
stoop behind no curtain I am what I am I am Boricua as boricuas come from
the isle of Manhattan and I croon Carlos Gardel tangos in my sleep and
Afro-Cuban beats in my blood and Xavier Cugat’s lukewarm latin is so
familiar and dear sneer dear but he’s familiar and dear but not Carmen
Miranda who’s a joke because I never was a joke I was a bit of a sensation
See! here’s a true honest-to-god Puerto Rican girl and she’s in college Hey!
Mary come here and look she’s from right here a South Bronx girl and she’s
honest-to-god in college now Ain’t that something who would believed it
Ain’t science wonderful or some such thing a wonder a wonder
And someone who did languages for a living stopped me in the
subway because how I spoke was a linguist’s treat I mean there it was
yiddish and Spanish and fine refined college educated english and irish
which I mainly keep in my prayers It’s dusty now I haven’t said my prayers
in decades but try my Hail Marrrry full of grrrace with the nun’s burr with
the nun’s disdain it’s all true and it’s all me do you know how I got an
English accent from the BBC I always say For years in the mountains of
Puerto Rico when I was 22 and 24 and 26 all those young years I listened to
the BBC and Radio Moscow’s English english announcers announce and
denounce and then I read Dickens all the way thru three or four times at
least and then later I read Dickens aloud in voices and when I came back to
the US I spoke mockdickens and mockBritish especially when I want to be
crisp efficient I know what I am doing and you can’t scare me tough that’s
why I am what I am and I’m a bit of a snob too Shit! why am I calling
myself names I really really dig the funny way the British speak and it’s
real it’s true and I love too the singing of yiddish sentences that go with
shrugs and hands and arms doing melancholy or lively dances I love the
sound and look of yiddish in the air in the body in the streets in the English
language nooo so what’s new so go by the grocer and buy some fruit oye
vey gevalt gefilte fish raisele oh and those words hundreds of them dotting
the english language like raisins in the bread shnook and schlemiel suftik
tush schmata all those soft sweet sounds saying sharp sharp things I am
what I am and I’m naturalized Jewish-American wasp is foreign and new
but Jewish-American is old show familiar schmata familiar and its me dears
its me bagels blintzes and all I am what I am Take it or leave me alone.
Dreams of Violence
Naomi Littlebear Morena

I was awakened by the sound of school children screaming at each

other. I thought I heard them beating someone. Loud solid thumps quivered
in my ears, a hoarse voice, horribly chanting in rapid succession, “oh my
god, oh my god” …
I closed my eyes and sunk into a panic that terrorized my morning. I
flew back in time, somewhere in grade school, walking home with my
cousin Virginia …

There was an unmistakable bitter taste in the air around us, forewarning. It
was the moment before the actual sight of them coming that froze our hearts
with fear. Suddenly like a stampede of wild bulls they plummeted toward
us. A half dozen or more boys, a frenzied blur of leather jackets, screaming
wild devils, thrashing at us with the harsh stiff leather, metal teeth zippers
battering our bewildered bodies. We ran on rubber band legs; I could hear
Virginia calling, “Mama, Mama.” In my ears was a sound like the beating
of wings, barbed wings that stung my skin, that made my lip swell in pain,
we ran hard thru the obstacle course of confused bodies, their horrifying
shrieks of rage thru the rain of leather.
By some miracle they scattered, the same force that brought them
seemed to snatch them up again and they were scattered to other dark
corners of the barrio.
My face was hot and swollen, i felt my tears burning rivers down my
cheeks. I could still hear Virginia crying for her mother, though now she
was just a mass of pain & crying. I could remember my own silence
thundering thru my body.
 As we neared home, my fear increased. I knew what would await me
there. I could close my eyes and see the vision a hundred times over.
I would slowly approach the door and before my entire body entered,
she could smell the mischief, sense the energy—my grandmother
immediately stopped whatever she was doing and demanded a full story.
But always my story would be cut in mid-sentence. Because whatever state
i was in, i provoked it.
“Why are you Dirty?” “Have you been fighting?” “Did you tear your
dress?”—a volley of quick demands and accusations came threateningly to
me, making me feel scared, watching her come towards me, reaching over
to the door where the razor strap hung, “her bonito,” as she called it.
Reaching towards me, strap in hand. My feet turning to lead. Trying to run
away, backing into a corner.

II

But where the strap couldn’t reach me, a vicious pinch could. I flew thru the
door being chased by more leather stings.
I ran far, sometimes two blocks away, my skin boiling, red criss-
crosses atop the scratches that the leather jackets had made. I cried alone
barely able to make out the shapes of people and cars thru my tears.

I am awake now, my lover still sleeping beside me, wondering how we can
blend our two worlds. How to mend the holes in our pasts, walk away
bravely from the nightmares.
Her attacks were more subtle, hidden within the false shelter of her
home; instead of gangs of boys chasing her, her brother was the nightly
intrusion, using her young child body to masturbate with, as she closed her
eyes too numb and scared to speak.
We both have no choice but to be survivors though the fears are still
there. Whenever i see a crowd of men, my heart sinks to my feet, whenever
i hear sudden noises, sudden crashing, anger, male noises, their very
laughter is abrasive to my ears. I shrink inside, walk close to the walls of
my soul, i look for a place to hide.
He Saw
Chrystos

his roots/went back to the reservation old

pain/old hunger
None of the ghosts were there
He went fishing caught
one or more every
day The fishing is what he needed to do
Gathering wild rice, remembered after years of suits, ties, clocks
adjustments
what he began
& left
He writes me about the fish
I grow hungry

He gave me all the whitest advantages

square house, football school, white mother baking white bread in a
white oven
He wanted to spare me his pain
didn’t
Silently our misunderstandings shred rage clouds our blood ties
I stare at his words wonder who he is
Lonely red daddy cradling ghost of his mama died when he was nine
pretending he was born without a father without straightjackets
Daddy you write in a painfully practiced scrawl
you learned learned learned beaten down a dying fish
You go back & can’t stay
Bring me a 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 the one who gathered water & wood
I don’t want this man who cut off his hair
joined the government
to be safe

We are both in danger

of your ancient fear
I learned to fish on my own
stopped
Now I’m learning to weave nets
 II

Entering the Lives of Others

Theory in the Flesh
Yolanda M. López, Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1978
Oil pastel on paper, 32″ × 24″
Collection of the Artist
Entering the Lives of Others
Theory in the Flesh

I am not interested in pursuing a society that uses analysis, research, and experimentation to
concretize their vision of cruel destinies for those bastards of the pilgrims; a society with
arrogance rising, moon in oppression, and sun in destruction.
—Barbara Cameron

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. Here, we attempt to bridge the
contradictions in our experience:
We are the colored in a white feminist movement.
We are the feminists among the people of our culture.
We are often the lesbians among the straight.
We do this bridging by naming our selves and by telling our stories in
our own words.
The theme echoing throughout most of these stories is our refusal of
the easy explanation to the conditions we live in. There is nothing easy
about a collective cultural history of what Mitsuye Yamada calls “unnatural
disasters”: the forced encampment of Indigenous people on government
reservations, the forced encampment of Japanese American people during
WWII, the forced encampment of our mothers as laborers in factories/in
fields/in our own and other people’s homes as paid or unpaid slaves.
Closer to home, we are still trying to separate the fibers of experience
we have had as daughters of a struggling people. Daily, we feel the pull and
tug of having to choose between which parts of our mothers’ heritages we
want to claim and wear and which parts have served to cloak us from the
knowledge of ourselves. “My mother and I work to unravel the knot”
(Levins Morales). This is how our theory develops. We are interested in
pursuing a society that uses flesh and blood experiences to concretize a
vision that can begin to heal our “wounded knee” (Chrystos).
Wonder Woman
Genny Lim

Sometimes I see reflections on bits of glass on sidewalks

I catch the glimmer of empty bottles floating out to sea
Sometimes I stretch my arms way above my head and wonder if
There are women along the Mekong doing the same

Sometimes I stare longingly at women who I will never know

Generous, laughing women with wrinkled cheeks and white teeth
Dragging along chubby, rosy-cheeked babies on fat, wobbly legs
Sometimes I stare at Chinese grandmothers
Getting on the 30 Stockton with shopping bags
Japanese women tourists in European hats
Middle-aged mothers with laundry carts
Young wives holding hands with their husbands
Lesbian women holding hands in coffee-houses
Smiling debutantes with bouquets of yellow daffodils
Silver-haired matrons with silver rhinestoned poodles
Painted prostitutes posing along MacArthur Boulevard
Giddy teenage girls snapping gum in fast cars
Widows clutching bibles, crucifixes

I look at them and wonder if

They are a part of me
I look in their eyes and wonder if
They share my dreams

I wonder if the woman in mink is content

If the stockbroker’s wife is afraid of growing old
If the professor’s wife is an alcoholic
If the woman in prison is me
There are copper-tanned women in Hyannis Port playing tennis
Women who eat with finger bowls
There are women in factories punching time clocks
Women tired of every waking hour of the day
I wonder why there are women born with silver spoons in their mouths
Women who have never known a day of hunger

Women who have never changed their own bed linen

And I wonder why there are women who must work
Women who must clean other women’s houses
Women who must shell shrimps for pennies a day
Women who must sew other women’s clothes
Who must cook
Who must die
In childbirth
In dreams

Why must woman stand divided?

Building the walls that tear them down?
Jill-of-all-trades
Lover, mother, housewife, friend, breadwinner
Heart and spade
A woman is a ritual
A house that must accommodate
A house that must endure
Generation after generation
Of wind and torment, of fire and rain
A house with echoing rooms
Closets with hidden cries
Walls with stretchmarks
Windows with eyes

Short, tall, skinny, fat

Pregnant, married, white, yellow, black, brown, red
Professional, working-class, aristocrat
Women cooking over coals in sampans
Women shining tiffany spoons in glass houses
Women stretching their arms way above the clouds
In Samarkand, in San Francisco
Along the Mekong
La Güera
Cherríe Moraga

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view
from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to
enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own.
—Emma Goldman1

I am the very well-educated daughter of a woman who, by the standards in

this country, would be considered largely illiterate. My mother was born in
Santa Paula, Southern California, at a time when much of the central valley
there was still farmland. Nearly thirty-five years later, in 1948, she was the
only daughter of six to marry an anglo, my father.
I remember all of my mother’s stories, probably much better than she
realizes. She is a fine storyteller, recalling every event of her life with
vividness of the present, noting each detail right down to the cut and color
of her dress. I remember stories of her being pulled out of school at the ages
of five, seven, nine, and eleven to work in the fields, along with her
brothers and sisters; stories of her father drinking away whatever small
profit she was able to make for the family; of her going the long way home
to avoid meeting him on the street, staggering toward the same destination.
I remember stories of my mother lying about her age in order to get a job as
a hat-check girl at Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana. At fourteen, she was
the main support of the family. I can still see her walking home alone at 3
a.m., only to turn all of her salary and tips over to her mother, who was
pregnant again.
The stories continue through the war years and on: walnut-cracking
factories, the Voit Rubber factory, and then the computer boom. I remember
my mother doing piecework for the electronics plant in our neighborhood.
In the late evening, she would sit in front of the TV set, wrapping copper
wires into the backs of circuit boards, talking about “keeping up with the
younger girls.” By that time, she was already in her mid-fifties.
 Meanwhile, I was college-prep in school. After classes, I would go
with my mother to fill out job applications for her, or write checks for her at
the supermarket. We would have the scenario all worked out ahead of time.
My mother would sign the check before we’d get to the store. Then, as
we’d approach the checkstand, she would say—within earshot of the
cashier—“oh honey, you go ‘head and make out the check,” as if she
couldn’t be bothered with such an insignificant detail. No one asked any
questions.
I was educated, and wore it with a keen sense of pride and satisfaction,
my head propped up with the knowledge, from my mother, that my life
would be easier than hers. I was educated; but more than this, I was “la
güera”: fair-skinned. Born with the features of my Chicana mother, but the
skin of my Anglo father, I had it made.
No one ever quite told me this (that light was right), but I knew that
being light was something valued in my family (who were all Chicano, with
the exception of my father). In fact, everything about my upbringing (at
least what occurred on a conscious level) attempted to bleach me of what
color I did have. Although my mother was fluent in it, I was never taught
much Spanish at home. I picked up what I did learn from school and from
overheard snatches of conversation among my relatives and mother. She
often called other lower-income Mexicans “braceros,” or “wetbacks,”
referring to herself and her family as “a different class of people.” And yet,
the real story was that my family, too, had been poor (some still are) and
farmworkers. My mother can remember this in her blood as if it were
yesterday. But this is something she would like to forget (and rightfully), for
to her, on a basic economic level, being Chicana meant being “less.” It was
through my mother’s desire to protect her children from poverty and
illiteracy that we became “anglocized”; the more effectively we could pass
in the white world, the better guaranteed our future.
From all of this, I experience, daily, a huge disparity between what I
was born into and what I was to grow up to become. Because, (as Goldman
suggests) these stories my mother told me crept under my “güera” skin. I
had no choice but to enter into the life of my mother. I had no choice. I took
her life into my heart, but managed to keep a lid on it as long as I feigned
being the happy, upwardly mobile heterosexual.
When I finally lifted the lid to my lesbianism, a profound connection
with my mother reawakened in me. It wasn’t until I acknowledged and
confronted my own lesbianism in the flesh, that my heartfelt identification
with and empathy for my mother’s oppression—due to being poor,
uneducated, and Chicana—was realized. My lesbianism is the avenue
through which I have learned the most about silence and oppression, and it
continues to be the most tactile reminder to me that we are not free human
beings.
You see, one follows the other. I had known for years that I was a
lesbian, had felt it in my bones, had ached with the knowledge, gone crazed
with the knowledge, wallowed in the silence of it. Silence is like starvation.
Don’t be fooled. It’s nothing short of that, and felt most sharply when one
has had a full belly most of her life. When we are not physically starving,
we have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation. It is from
this starvation that other starvations can be recognized—if one is willing to
take the risk of making the connection—if one is willing to be responsible
to the result of the connection. For me, the connection is an inevitable one.
What I am saying is that the joys of looking like a white girl ain’t so
great since I realized I could be beaten on the street for being a dyke. If my
sister’s being beaten because she’s Black, it’s pretty much the same
principle. We’re both getting beaten any way you look at it. The connection
is blatant; and in the case of my own family, the difference in the privileges
attached to looking white instead of brown are merely a generation apart.
In this country, lesbianism is a poverty—as is being brown, as is being
a woman, as is being just plain poor. 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.
When the going gets rough, will we abandon our so-called comrades in
a flurry of racist/heterosexist/what-have-you panic? To whose camp, then,
should the lesbian of color retreat? Her very presence violates the ranking
and abstraction of oppression. Do we merely live hand to mouth? Do we
merely struggle with the “ism” that’s sitting on top of our own heads?
The answer is: yes, I think first we do; and we must do so thoroughly
and deeply. But to fail to move out from there will only isolate us in our
own oppression—will only insulate, rather than radicalize us.
 To illustrate: a gay male friend of mine once confided to me that he
continued to feel that, on some level, I didn’t trust him because he was
male; that he felt, really, if it ever came down to a “battle of the sexes,” I
might kill him. I admitted that I might very well. He wanted to understand
the source of my distrust. I responded, “You’re not a woman. Be a woman
for a day. Imagine being a woman.” He confessed that the thought terrified
him because, to him, being a woman meant being raped by men. He had felt
raped by men; he wanted to forget what that meant. What grew from that
discussion was the realization that in order for him to create an authentic
alliance with me, he must deal with the primary source of his own sense of
oppression. He must, first, emotionally come to terms with what it feels like
to be a victim. If he—or anyone—were to truly do this, it would be
impossible to discount the oppression of others, except by again forgetting
how we have been hurt.
And yet, oppressed groups are forgetting all the time. There are
instances of this in the rising Black middle class, and certainly an obvious
trend of such “unconsciousness” among white gay men. Because to
remember may mean giving up whatever privileges we have managed to
squeeze out of this society by virtue of our gender, race, class, or sexuality.
Within the women’s movement, the connections among women of
different backgrounds and sexual orientations have been fragile, at best. I
think this phenomenon is indicative of our failure to seriously address
ourselves to some very frightening questions: How have I internalized my
own oppression? How have I oppressed? Instead, we have let rhetoric do
the job of poetry. Even the word “oppression” has lost its power. We need a
new language, better words that can more closely describe women’s fear of,
and resistance to, one another; words that will not always come out
sounding like dogma.
What prompted me in the first place to work on an anthology by
radical women of color was a deep sense that I had a valuable insight to
contribute, by virtue of my birthright and background. And yet, I don’t
really understand firsthand what it feels like being shitted on for being
brown. I understand much more about the joys of it—being Chicana and
having family are synonymous for me. What I know about loving, singing,
crying, telling stories, speaking with my heart and hands, even having a
sense of my own soul comes from the love of my mother, aunts, cousins …
 But at the age of twenty-seven, it is frightening to acknowledge that I
have internalized a racism and classism, where the object of oppression is
not only someone outside of my skin, but the someone inside my skin. In
fact, to a large degree, the real battle with such oppression, for all of us,
begins under the skin. I have had to confront the fact that much of what I
value about being Chicana, about my family, has been subverted by anglo
culture and my own cooperation with it. This realization did not occur to
me overnight. For example, it wasn’t until long after my graduation from
the private college I’d attended in Los Angeles that I realized the major
reason for my total alienation from and fear of my classmates was rooted in
class and culture. CLICK.
Three years after graduation, in an apple-orchard in Sonoma, a friend
of mine (who comes from an Italian Irish working-class family) says to me,
“Cherríe, no wonder you felt like such a nut in school. Most of the people
there were white and rich.” It was true. All along I had felt the difference,
but not until I had put the words “class” and “color” to the experience, did
my feelings make any sense. For years, I had berated myself for not being
as “free” as my classmates. I completely bought that they simply had more
guts than I did—to rebel against their parents and run around the country
hitchhiking, reading books and studying “art.” They had enough privilege
to be atheists, for chrissake. There was no one around filling in the disparity
for me between their parents, who were Hollywood filmmakers, and my
parents, who wouldn’t know the name of a filmmaker if their lives
depended on it (and precisely because their lives didn’t depend on it, they
couldn’t be bothered). But I knew nothing about “privilege” then. White
was right. Period. I could pass. If I got educated enough, there would never
be any telling.
Three years after that, another CLICK. In a letter to Barbara Smith, I
wrote:

I went to a concert where Ntozake Shange was reading. There,

everything exploded for me. She was speaking a language that I
knew—in the deepest parts of me—existed, and that I had ignored
in my own feminist studies and even in my own writing. What
Ntozake caught in me is the realization that in my development as
a poet, I have, in many ways, denied the voice of my brown
mother—the brown in me. I have acclimated to the sound of a
 white language which, as my father represents it, does not speak
to the emotions in my poems—emotions which stem from the
love of my mother.
The reading was agitating. Made me uncomfortable. Threw
me into a week-long terror of how deeply I was affected. I felt
that I had to start all over again. That I turned only to the
perceptions of white middle-class women to speak for me and all
women. I am shocked by my own ignorance.

Sitting in that auditorium chair was the first time I had realized to the
core of me that for years I had disowned the language I knew best—ignored
the words and rhythms that were the closest to me. The sounds of my
mother and aunts gossiping—half in English, half in Spanish—while
drinking cerveza in the kitchen. And the hands—I had cut off the hands in
my poems. But not in conversation; still the hands could not be kept down.
Still they insisted on moving.
The reading had forced me to remember that I knew things from my
roots. But to remember puts me up against what I don’t know. Shange’s
reading agitated me because she spoke with power about a world that is
both alien and common to me: “the capacity to enter into the lives of
others.” But you can’t just take the goods and run. I knew then, sitting in the
Oakland auditorium (as I know in my poetry), that the only thing worth
writing about is what seems to be unknown and, therefore, fearful.
The “unknown” is often depicted in racist literature as the “darkness”
within a person. Similarly, sexist writers will refer to fear in the form of the
vagina, calling it “the orifice of death.” In contrast, it is a pleasure to read
works such as Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, where fear and
alienation are described as “the white ghosts.” And yet, the bulk of
literature in this country reinforces the myth that what is dark and female is
evil. Consequently, each of us—whether dark, female, or both—has in
some way internalized this oppressive imagery. What the oppressor often
succeeds in doing is simply externalizing his fears, projecting them into the
bodies of women, Asians, gays, disabled folks, whoever seems most
“other.”

call me
roach and presumptuous
 nightmare on your white pillow
your itch to destroy
the indestructible
part of yourself
—Audre Lorde2

But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity.

He fears he will discover in himself the same aches, the same longings as
those of the people he has shitted on. He fears the immobilization
threatened by his own incipient guilt. He fears he will have to change his
life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called
different. He fears the hatred, anger, and vengeance of those he has hurt.
This is the oppressor’s nightmare, but it is not exclusive to him. We
women have a similar nightmare, for each of us in some way has been both
oppressed and the oppressor. We are afraid to look at how we have failed
each other. We are afraid to see how we have taken the values of our
oppressor into our hearts and turned them against ourselves and one
another. We are afraid to admit how deeply “the man’s” words have been
ingrained in us.
To assess the damage is a dangerous act. I think of how, even as a
feminist lesbian, I have so wanted to ignore my own homophobia, my own
hatred of myself for being queer. I have not wanted to admit that my
deepest personal sense of myself has not quite “caught up” with my
“woman-identified” politics. I have been afraid to criticize lesbian writers
who choose to “skip over” these issues in the name of feminism. In 1979,
we talk of “old gay” and “butch and femme” roles as if they were ancient
history. We toss them aside as merely patriarchal notions. And yet, the truth
of the matter is that I have sometimes taken society’s fear and hatred of
lesbians to bed with me. I have sometimes hated my lover for loving me. I
have sometimes felt “not woman enough” for her. I have sometimes felt
“not man enough.” For a lesbian trying to survive in a heterosexist society,
there is no easy way around these emotions. Similarly, in a white-dominated
world, there is little getting around racism and our own internalization of it.
It’s always there, embodied in someone we least expect to rub up against.
When we do rub up against this person, there then is the challenge.
There then is the opportunity to look at the nightmare within us. But we
usually shrink from such a challenge.
 Time and time again, I have observed that the usual response among
white women’s groups when the “racism issue” comes up is to deny the
difference. I have heard comments like, “Well, we’re open to all women;
why don’t they (women of color) come? You can only do so much …” But
there is seldom any analysis of how the very nature and structure of the
group itself may be founded on racist or classist assumptions. More
important, so often the women seem to feel no loss, no lack, no absence
when women of color are not involved; therefore, there is little desire to
change the situation. This has hurt me deeply. I have come to believe that
the only reason women of a privileged class will dare to look at how it is
that they oppress, is when they’ve come to know the meaning of their own
oppression. And understand that the oppression of others hurts them
personally.
The other side of the story is that women of color and working-class
women often shrink from challenging white middle-class women. It is
much easier to rank oppressions and set up a hierarchy, rather than take
responsibility for changing our own lives. We have failed to demand that
white women, particularly those who claim to be speaking for all women,
be accountable for their racism.
The dialogue has simply not gone deep enough.
I have many times questioned my right to even work on an anthology
which is to be written “exclusively by Third World women.” I have had to
look critically at my claim to color, at a time when, among white feminist
ranks, it is a “politically correct” (and sometimes peripherally
advantageous) assertion to make. I must acknowledge the fact that,
physically, I have had a choice about making that claim, in contrast to
women who have not had such a choice, and have been abused for their
color. I must reckon with the fact that for most of my life, by virtue of the
very fact that I am white-looking, I identified with, and aspired toward,
white values, and that I rode the wave of that Southern Californian privilege
as far as conscience would let me.
Well, now I feel both bleached and beached. I feel angry about this—
the years when I refused to recognize privilege, both when it worked
against me, and when I worked it, ignorantly, at the expense of others.
These are not settled issues. This is why this work feels so risky to me. It
continues to be discovery. It has brought me into contact with women who
invariably know a hell of a lot more than I do about racism, as experienced
in the flesh, as revealed in the flesh of their writing.
I think: what is my responsibility to my roots—both white and brown,
Spanish-speaking and English? I am a woman with a foot in both worlds;
and I refuse the split. I feel the necessity for dialogue. Sometimes I feel it
urgently.
But one voice is not enough, nor two, although this is where dialogue
begins. It is essential that radical feminists confront their fear of, and
resistance to, each other, because without this, there will be no bread on the
table. Simply, we will not survive. If we could make this connection in our
heart of hearts, that if we are serious about a revolution—better—if we
seriously believe there should be joy in our lives (real joy, not just “good
times”), then we need one another. We women need each other. Because
my/your solitary, self-asserting “go-for the throat-of-fear” power is not
enough. The real power, as you and I well know, is collective. I can’t afford
to be afraid of you, nor you of me. If it takes head-on collisions, let’s do it:
this polite timidity is killing us.
As Lorde suggests in the passage I cited earlier, it is in looking to the
nightmare that the dream is found. There, the survivor emerges to insist on
a future, a vision, yes, born out of what is dark and female. The feminist
movement must be a movement of such survivors, a movement with a
future.
September 19793

Notes
1. Alix Kates Shulman, “Was My Life Worth Living?,” Red Emma Speaks (New York: Random
House, 1972), 388.
2. From “The Brown Menace or Poem to the Survival of Roaches,” The New York Head Shop and
Museum (Detroit: Broadside, 1974), 48.
3. Thanks to Maria Stecenko for her editing help in the original version of this essay.
Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster
Reflections of an Asian American Woman

Mitsuye Yamada

Last year for the Asian segment of the Ethnic American Literature course I
was teaching, I selected a new anthology entitled Aiiieeeee! compiled by a
group of outspoken Asian American writers. During the discussion of the
long but thought-provoking introduction to this anthology, one of my
students blurted out that she was offended by its militant tone and that as a
white person she was tired of always being blamed for the oppression of all
the minorities. I noticed several of her classmates’ eyes nodding in tacit
agreement. A discussion of the “militant” voices in some of the other
writings we had read in the course ensued. Surely, I pointed out, some of
these other writings have been just as, if not more, militant as the words in
this introduction? Had they been offended by those also but failed to
express their feelings about them? To my surprise, they said they were not
offended by any of the Black American, Chicano, or American Indian
writings, but were hard-pressed to explain why when I asked for an
explanation. A little further discussion revealed that they “understood” the
anger expressed by the Black Americans and Chicanos and they
“empathized” with the frustrations and sorrow expressed by the American
Indian. But the Asian Americans??
Then finally, one student said it for all of them: “It made me angry.
Their anger made me angry, because I didn’t even know the Asian
Americans felt oppressed. I didn’t expect their anger.”
At this time I was involved in an academic due process procedure
begun as a result of a grievance I had filed the previous semester against the
administrators at my college. I had filed a grievance for violation of my
rights as a teacher who had worked in the district for almost eleven years.
My student’s remark “Their anger made me angry … I didn’t expect their
anger,” explained for me the reactions of some of my own colleagues as
well as the reactions of the administrators during those previous months.
The grievance procedure was a time-consuming and emotionally draining
process, but the basic principle was too important for me to ignore. That
basic principle was that I, an individual teacher, do have certain rights that
are given and my superiors cannot, should not, violate them with impunity.
When this was pointed out to them, however, they responded with shocked
surprise that I, of all people, would take them to task for violation of what
was clearly written policy in our college district. They all seemed to
exclaim, “We don’t understand this; this is so uncharacteristic of her; she
seemed such a nice person, so polite, so obedient, so non-trouble-making.”
What was even more surprising was once they were forced to acknowledge
that I was determined to start the due process action, they assumed I was
not doing it on my own. One of the administrators suggested someone must
have pushed me into this, undoubtedly some of “those feminists” on our
campus, he said wryly.
In this age when women are clearly making themselves visible on all
fronts, I, an Asian American woman, am still functioning as a “front for
those feminists” and therefore invisible. The realization of this sinks in
slowly. Asian Americans as a whole are finally coming to claim their own,
demanding that they be included in the multicultural history of our country.
I like to think, in spite of my administrator’s myopia, that the most
stereotyped minority of them all, the Asian American woman, is just now
emerging to become part of that group. It took forever. Perhaps it is
important to ask ourselves why it took so long. We should ask ourselves this
question just when we think we are emerging as a viable minority in the
fabric of our society. I should add to my student’s words, “because I didn’t
even know they felt oppressed,” that it took this long because we Asian
American women have not admitted to ourselves that we were oppressed.
We, the visible minority that is invisible.
I say this because until a few years ago I have been an Asian American
woman working among non-Asians in an educational institution where
most of the decision makers were men;1 an Asian American woman
thriving under the smug illusion that I was not the stereotypic image of the
Asian woman because I had a career teaching English in a community
college. I did not think anything assertive was necessary to make my point.
People who know me, I reasoned, the ones who count, know who I am and
what I think. Thus, even when what I considered a veiled racist remark was
made in a casual social setting, I would “let it go” because it was pointless
to argue with people who didn’t even know their remark was racist. I had
supposed that I was practicing passive resistance while being stereotyped,
but it was so passive no one noticed I was resisting; it was so much my
expected role that it ultimately rendered me invisible.
My experience leads me to believe that contrary to what I thought, I
had actually been contributing to my own stereotyping. Like the hero in
Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, I had become invisible to white
Americans, and it clung to me like a bad habit. Like most bad habits, this
one crept up on me because I took it in minute doses like Mithradates’
poison, and my mind and body adapted so well to it I hardly noticed it was
there.
For the past eleven years I have busied myself with the usual chores of
an English teacher, a wife of a research chemist, and a mother of four
rapidly growing children. I hadn’t even done much to shatter this particular
stereotype: the middle-class woman happy to be bringing home the extra
income and quietly fitting into the man’s world of work. When the Asian
American woman is lulled into believing that people perceive her as being
different from other Asian women (the submissive, subservient, ready-to-
please, easy-to-get-along-with Asian woman), she is kept comfortably
content with the state of things. She becomes ineffectual in the milieu in
which she moves. The seemingly apolitical middle-class woman and the
apolitical Asian woman constituted a double invisibility.
I had created an underground culture of survival for myself and had
become in the eyes of others the person I was trying not to be. 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” to eventually do both, I had assumed I was more or less free, not
realizing that those who are free make and take choices; they do not choose
from options proffered by “those out there.”
I, personally, had not “emerged” until I was almost fifty years old.
Apparently through a long conditioning process, I had learned how not to
be seen for what I am. A long history of ineffectual activities had been, I
realize now, initiation rites toward my eventual invisibility. The training
begins in childhood; and for women and minorities, whatever is started in
childhood is continued throughout their adult lives. I first recognized just
how invisible I was in my first real confrontation with my parents a few
years after the outbreak of World War II.
During the early years of the war, my older brother, Mike, and I left
the concentration camp in Idaho to work and study at the University of
Cincinnati. My parents came to Cincinnati soon after my father’s release
from Internment Camp (these were POW camps to which many of the Issei2
men, leaders in their communities, were sent by the FBI), and worked as
domestics in the suburbs. I did not see them too often because by this time I
had met and was much influenced by a pacifist who was out on a
“furlough” from a conscientious objectors’ camp in Trenton, North Dakota.
When my parents learned about my “boy friend” they were appalled and
frightened. After all, this was the period when everyone in the country was
expected to be one-hundred percent behind the war effort, and the Nisei3
boys who had volunteered for the Armed Forces were out there fighting and
dying to prove how American we really were. However, during
interminable arguments with my father and overheard arguments between
my parents, I was devastated to learn they were not so much concerned
about my having become a pacifist, but they were more concerned about the
possibility of my marrying one. They were understandably frightened (my
father’s prison years of course were still fresh on his mind) about
repercussions on the rest of the family. In an attempt to make my father
understand me, I argued that even if I didn’t marry him, I’d still be a
pacifist; but my father reassured me that it was “all right” for me to be a
pacifist because as a Japanese national and a “girl” it didn’t make any
difference to anyone. In frustration I remember shouting, “But can’t you
see, I’m philosophically committed to the pacifist cause,” but he dismissed
this with “In my college days we used to call philosophy, foolosophy,” and
that was the end of that. When they were finally convinced I was not going
to marry “my pacifist,” the subject was dropped and we never discussed it
again.
As if to confirm my father’s assessment of the harmlessness of my
opinions, my brother Mike, an American citizen, was suddenly expelled
from the University of Cincinnati while I, “an enemy alien,” was permitted
to stay. We assumed that his stand as a pacifist, although he was classified a
4-F because of his health, contributed to his expulsion. We were told the Air
Force was conducting sensitive wartime research on campus and requested
his removal, but they apparently felt my presence on campus was not as
threatening.
I left Cincinnati in 1945, hoping to leave behind this and other
unpleasant memories gathered there during the war years, and plunged right
into the politically active atmosphere at New York University where
students, many of them returning veterans, were continuously promoting
one cause or other by making speeches in Washington Square, passing out
petitions, or staging demonstrations. On one occasion, I tagged along with a
group of students who took a train to Albany to demonstrate on the steps of
the State Capitol. I think I was the only Asian in this group of
predominantly Jewish students from NYU. People who passed us were
amused and shouted, “Go home and grow up.” I suppose Governor Dewey,
who refused to see us, assumed we were a group of adolescents without a
cause as most college students were considered to be during those days. It
appears they weren’t expecting any results from our demonstration. There
were no newspersons, no security persons, no police. No one tried to stop
us from doing what we were doing. We simply did “our thing” and went
back to our studies until next time, and my father’s words were again
confirmed: it made no difference to anyone, being a young student
demonstrator in peacetime, 1947.
Not only the young, but those who feel powerless over their own lives
know what it is like not to make a difference on anyone or anything. The
poor know it only too well, and we women have known it since we were
little girls. The most insidious part of this conditioning process, I realize
now, was that we have been trained not to expect a response in ways that
matter. We may be listened to and responded to with placating words and
gestures, but our psychological mindset has already told us time and again
that we were born into a ready-made world into which we must fit
ourselves, and that many of us do it very well.
This mindset is the result of not believing that the political and social
forces affecting our lives are determined by some person, or a group of
persons, probably sitting behind a desk or around a conference table.
Just recently I read an article about “the remarkable track record of
success” of the Nisei in the United States. One Nisei was quoted as saying
he attributed our stamina and endurance to our ancestors whose characters
had been shaped, he said, by their living in a country which has been
constantly besieged by all manner of natural disasters, such as earthquakes
and hurricanes. He said the Nisei has inherited a steely will, a will to endure
and hence, to survive.
This evolutionary explanation disturbs me, because it equates the “act
of God” (i.e., natural disasters) to the “act of man” (i.e., the war, the
evacuation). The former is not within our power to alter, but the latter, I
should think, is. By putting the “acts of God” on par with the acts of man,
we shrug off personal responsibilities.
I have, for too long a period of time, accepted the opinion of others
(even though they were directly affecting my life) as if they were objective
events totally out of my control. Because I separated such opinions from the
persons who were making them, I accepted them the way I accepted natural
disasters; and I endured them as inevitable. I have tried to cope with people
whose points of view alarmed me in the same way that I had adjusted to
natural phenomena, such as hurricanes, which plowed into my life from
time to time. I would readjust my dismantled feelings in the same way that
we repaired the broken shutters after the storm. The Japanese have an all-
purpose expression in their language for this attitude of resigned
acceptance: “Shikataganai.” “It can’t be helped.” “There’s nothing I can do
about it.” It is said with the shrug of the shoulders and tone of finality,
perhaps not unlike the “those-were-my-orders” tone that was used at the
Nuremberg trials. With all the sociological studies that have been made
about the causes of the evacuations of the Japanese Americans during
World War II, we should know by now that “they” knew that the West
Coast Japanese Americans would go without too much protest, and of
course, “they” were right, for most of us (with the exception of those
notable few) resigned to our fate, albeit bewildered and not willingly. We
were not perceived by our government as responsive Americans; we were
objects that happened to be standing in the path of the storm.
Perhaps this kind of acceptance is a way of coping with the “real”
world. One stands against the wind for a time, and then succumbs
eventually because there is no point to being stubborn against all odds. The
wind will not respond to entreaties anyway, one reasons; one should have
sense enough to know that. I’m not ready to accept this evolutionary
reasoning. It is too rigid for me; I would like to think that my new
awareness is going to make me more visible than ever, and to allow me to
make some changes in the “man-made disaster” I live in at the present time.
Part of being visible is refusing to separate the actors from their actions, and
demanding that they be responsible for them.
By now, riding along with the minorities’ and women’s movements, I
think we are making a wedge into the main body of American life, but
people are still looking right through and around us, assuming we are
simply tagging along. Asian American women still remain in the
background and we are heard but not really listened to. Like Muzak, they
think we are piped into the airwaves by someone else. We must remember
that one of the most insidious ways of keeping women and minorities
powerless is to let them only talk about harmless and inconsequential
subjects, or let them speak freely and not listen to them with serious intent.
We need to raise our voices a little more, even as they say to us “This
is so uncharacteristic of you.” To finally recognize our own invisibility is to
finally be on the path toward visibility. Invisibility is not a natural state for
anyone.

Notes
1. It is hoped this will change now that a black woman is chancellor of our college district.
2. Issei—Immigrant Japanese, living in the US.
3. Nisei—Second-generation Japanese, born in the US.
It’s in My Blood, My Face—My Mother’s Voice,
the Way I Sweat

Anita Valerio*

Hey ya hey ya ho—

where the sun does not malign the seasons

I remember the place where the sun does not malign the seasons flutes of
penitentes & headdresses for the Okan1 we rub our offerings of dried meat
into the earth and the holy woman comes out and dances she is wearing the
sacred headdress she is one of the last qualified to do this my mother says it
is because she has only been with her husband and never any other man it
makes her a virgin of sorts my mother says it’s hard to find a woman like
that these days a holy woman and that is why I sometimes don’t want to
think about being Indian why sometimes I could really care less these days
it’s sad. There was a time three years back when I was so angry so proud I
wanted so much to reclaim my language the symbols and sacred gestures
the land but now? I went back to the reserve for two months traditional
cultures are conservative and this one is patriarchal.
What does it mean that it is a holy woman who sets up the Okan? and
why does it make her holy that only one man has touched her? is it really
because she has been a good little piece of property to that one man or is it
because she is a pure vessel of female power not permeated with the male?
is her setting up the Okan—which is the principal ceremony of the culture
—a hearkening back to earlier matriarchal times? it seems as though you
can’t always trust people’s interpretations as their minds have been colored
by Catholicism—t.v. etc. Some would like to believe that the values of the
Roman Catholic Church and the values of the Native American tribal
religions are one and the same. Hah! being totally traditional seems wrong
as well as it seems the task is first to find out what was our tradition—feel it
through the skin.
 My earlier memories are the best innocence may be an escalation of
memory brings desires smells of morning—standing on the porch smelling
morning blue sky rolling hills unrest ecstasy was in my soul there seemed to
be balance then before I knew the meaning of the word later I wanted to go
back to it the wild spacious morning air the horses corralled the red barn
and the sticky hot summer nights watching the pickup trucks come in from
town Being an Indian … I didn’t even realize that’s what I was—an Indian
—in fact I jumped up and down in protest “I’m not an Indian—I’m not an
Indian!” when my relatives would tell me I was. After all, Indians were the
bad guys on T.V. and though we didn’t have running water that year or even
telephones—yes—we did have television. Apparently, there were also times
when I’d scream “I’m an Indian, I’m an Indian” when my relatives would
say I wasn’t … Such has been life.
Just what it is to be an “Indian”—Native American—a Skin … &
more importantly how do I—half blood Indian and half Chicana relate to it
all? Well, sometimes I’ve made quite an occupation of thinking about it and
sometimes, more recently, I’d rather not bother. Why bother? It seems too
conceptual—and worse—too bound up with invectives. Yet—I cannot
forget and I don’t want to. It’s in my blood, my face my mother’s voice it’s
in my voice my speech rhythms my dreams and memories it’s the shape of
my legs and though I am light skinned it is my features—my eyes and face
shape … it must even be the way I sweat! Why it’s damn near everything!
and I feel it’s my yearning for wide spaces—for the flat and nude plains.
Yes, I’ve been denied. What a shame not to speak Blackfoot. It was my
mother’s first language—she’d talk it over the phone long distance—she’d
speak it when she went home (the blood reserve in Southern Alberta) she
even spoke it in my dreams but I never learned. All that talking denied me.

Weird, superstitious, unnatural—Imagine in this day and age!

My mother talking: “Edward’s wife cries by his bed. His dead wife, she
cries by his bed. He had to go to a medicine man to see what was
happening. She committed suicide a couple years back, she must be
restless.” “My, imagine … What must it be like?” I say, “My that’s
something, weird.” Weird? The word foreign to me as soon as I’ve said it.
Weird? A shadow flits across my mother’s eyes. How could that have come
up? I recoil inside, I don’t know the part of me that’s said it. My stomach
tingles. I feel tight. The word is dry, false—“weird.” Of course, I remember,
of course I know. “Weird” only a non-Indian would say that. Someone who
doesn’t know, who hasn’t been raised to see that life is a continuous whole
from flesh to spirit, that we’re not as easily separated as some think. I knew
that.
“Yea—that’s good he went to see that medicine man,” I say. I’ve been
around too many people who don’t see it that way, that easily. Spirits? They
need proof, they are skeptical. One time I talked with some white friends
for nearly two hours straight about ghosts. “Who knows? Ghosts might be
real: sometimes there is proof,” they said. They told me there are pictures
now. Good, maybe now they will know. And that is where I learned to say
“weird.” Weird, superstitious, unnatural—Imagine, in this day and age.

The weeping was all of our pain—a collective wound

I remember my great-grandfather Makwyiapi in his tipi. Smelling the sweet

grass, mother telling me it was holy and not to touch his things. I never
really got to know him. Makwyiapi, “Wolf Old Man” his english was
broken and he always spoke Blackfoot. He had a sweat2 lodge outside his
house. He was a medicine man and once cured a man of face cancer by
dreaming of a certain mixture of herbs and roots. This came to him in a
dream. I grew up knowing about dreams and remedies, spirits—the still
black nights on the plains. I attended my first sweat when I was sixteen, it
was high in the mountains. We went to a lodge afterwards. This first sweat
was so miraculous, so refreshing and so magical—it was as though God had
appeared before me and walked about and danced. It reinstated my sense of
the Marvelous and also a sense of sacredness. I cried inside that sweat, it
seemed as though I could never stop crying as though my heart was being
tugged at and finally torn loose inside my chest. Other people cried too. So
much emotion is expressed in the sweat and in the medicine lodge. And the
weird thing about it is—you don’t really know what it is you’re crying
about. The emotions seem to come out of some primeval cavity—some
lonesome half-remembered place. It seems when I cried it was more than an
individual pain. The weeping was all of our pain—a collective wound—it is
larger than each individual. In the sweat it seems as though we all
remember a past—a collective presence—our past as Native people before
being colonized and culturally liquidated.
Barrier between myself and my people

At age seven I had a wild crush on a girl a year younger than myself that
lasted a whole year. I would stare at her picture in the second grade
yearbook and cry. I drew her pictures of dragons and gave them to her. It
seemed a bit odd to me, but I wanted to marry her. I felt as though I was the
only girl who’d ever felt these things. Perhaps there had been a mistake. I
decided it would be better to be a boy and I stayed awake at night praying
to turn into one. If I was a boy it would be easier to be a superhero and to be
president. Finally—I decided to remain a girl and make the best of it.
We moved and I left her behind—but the memory of that early, intense
feeling stayed on. It seemed so natural and heartfelt and it scared me a little.
I was already becoming aware of my emotions as a lesbian—as different.
That is one of the barriers between myself and the reserve. How to
explain, who can I tell, should I tell anyone? I grew up with these people,
my relatives, my cousins, my aunts and uncles—various friends. I grew up
loving that land and always needing to return there. In ’77 I lived there for
two months. I went out to Babb and drank at the Indian bar, I went to
sweats (not right after partying however—as you have to either give up
drinking completely or wait four days after last imbibing before entering the
sweat lodge). I’d chase horses—go get them to ride, I jogged on the plains
(all the while watching for bulls which might chase me) and hung around
the house—reading, watching television, and cleaning. I felt the ennui of
reserve life, the timelessness, I also sensed conservatism and a limitation.
People expected me to be more tied to my parents than I am, to want to live
close to them, to feel more homesick at the age of twenty for my mother
and father. And yet sometimes I feel almost crippled by a homesickness
inside me.
There is something sturdy and healthy about extended families, the
way people care for each other, the way they depend upon and take care of
one another. I feel lucky to have been touched by such a situation while
growing up. But now, I would find that hard to live with. More than
anything because it is patriarchal, women have a certain limited role (as do
men), and I am gay. Perhaps in the old days, in some way or other I could
have fit in there. But today, my lesbianism has become a barrier between
myself and my people. What to say when my grandmother or aunt asks if
I’ve met a boyfriend. The perennial lesbian problem—how to tell the folks
and what to tell them.
It is hard to be around other people talking about their lives and not be
able to talk about your own in the same way. It causes a false and painful
separateness—which I’ll have to live with and ignore until I know how and
what to do otherwise.

You will return to the Indian way

I lived at the North End for about a year. I was five. We had no running
water so when we bathed we got water from a nearby river. For a year I
enjoyed the nearby hills where there are supposed to be spirits. Now the
river is thick with pollution from a factory upstream, the grass has grown
tall around the old house, my grandfather has been dead twelve years. Still,
each year my family visits the reserve.
Once an uncle of mine came to me in a dream, he picked me up as
though I was a child saying, “Apoyakee, Apoyakee when are you going to
come home and take care of the little ones?” Apoyakee is my Blackfoot
name given to me by my grandpa, Shade. It means, “Light or fair-haired
woman,” obviously given to me because of my light hair (I was blonde as a
child, the only fair complected person in my family).
Off and on, I think of going back “home” to live for a good six to
twelve months. Work, have a good time, learn Blackfoot, learn how to set
up a sweat, how to open up a medicine bundle, maybe learn the handgame
and some songs.
Five years ago I dreamt myself walking out of my home in Littleton
and out to a flat, long desert. There, beneath a shelter of poles and sticks, an
old Kainah woman sat, dressed in a kerchief and a long blue dress. Some
strange looking pipes were being passed around, none of them were handed
to me as none were quite right for me. These pipes were not holy or in any
way recognizable to me as anything special. The old lady looked at me a
long time, then she said, “You will return to the Indian way.”

* Anita Valerio transitioned from female to male in 1989 and is now Max Wolf Valerio.

Notes
1. The Sundance.
2. A sweat is a religious purification ceremony.
“Gee, You Don’t Seem Like an Indian from the
Reservation”
Barbara Cameron

One of the very first words I learned in my Lakota language was wasicu
which designates white people. At that early age, my comprehension of
wasicu was gained from observing and listening to my family discussing
the wasicu. My grandmother always referred to white people as the “wasicu
sica” with emphasis on sica, our word for terrible or bad. By the age of five
I had seen one Indian man gunned down in the back by the police and was a
silent witness to a gang of white teenage boys beating up an elderly Indian
man. I’d hear stories of Indian ranch hands being “accidentally” shot by
white ranchers. I quickly began to understand the wasicu menace my family
spoke of.
My hatred for the wasicu was solidly implanted by the time I entered
first grade. Unfortunately in first grade I became teacher’s pet so my
teacher had a fondness for hugging me which always repulsed me. I
couldn’t stand the idea of a white person touching me. Eventually I realized
that it wasn’t the white skin that I hated, but it was their culture of deceit,
greed, racism, and violence.
During my first memorable visit to a white town, I was appalled that
they thought of themselves as superior to my people. Their manner of living
appeared devoid of life and bordered on hostility even for one another. They
were separated from each other by their perfectly, politely fenced square
plots of green lawn. The only lawns on my reservation were the lawns of
the BIA1 officials or white christians. The white people always seemed so
loud, obnoxious, and vulgar. And the white parents were either screaming at
their kids, threatening them with some form of punishment or hitting them.
After spending a day around white people, I was always happy to go back
to the reservation where people followed a relaxed yet respectful code of
relating with each other. The easy teasing and joking that were inherent
with the Lakota were a welcome relief after a day with the plastic faces.
I vividly remember two occasions during my childhood in which I was
cognizant of being an Indian. The first time was at about three years of age
when my family took me to my first pow-wow. I kept asking my
grandmother, “Where are the Indians? Where are the Indians? Are they
going to have bows and arrows?” I was very curious and strangely excited
about the prospect of seeing real live Indians even though I myself was one.
It’s a memory that has remained with me through all these years because it’s
so full of the subtleties of my culture. There was a sweet wonderful aroma
in the air from the dancers and from the traditional food booths. There were
lots of grandmothers and grandfathers with young children running about.
Pow-wows in the Plains usually last for three days, sometimes longer, with
Indian people traveling from all parts of our country to dance, to share food
and laughter, and to be with each other. I could sense the importance of our
gathering times and it was the beginning of my awareness that my people
are a great and different nation.
The second time in my childhood when I knew very clearly that I was
Indian occurred when I was attending an all white (except for me)
elementary school. During Halloween my friends and I went trick or
treating. At one of the last stops, the mother knew all of the children except
for me. She asked me to remove my mask so she could see who I was. After
I removed my mask, she realized I was an Indian and quite cruelly told me
so, refusing to give me the treats my friends had received. It was a
stingingly painful experience.
I told my mother about it the next evening after I tried to understand it.
My mother was outraged and explained the realities of being an Indian in
South Dakota. My mother paid a visit to the woman which resulted in their
expressing a barrage of equal hatred for one another. I remember sitting in
our pickup hearing the intensity of the anger and feeling very sad that my
mother had to defend her child to someone who wasn’t worthy of her
presence.
I spent a part of my childhood feeling great sadness and helplessness
about how it seemed that Indians were open game for the white people, to
kill, maim, beat up, insult, rape, cheat, or whatever atrocity the white people
wanted to play with. There was also a rage and frustration that has not died.
When I look back on reservation life it seems that I spent a great deal of
time attending the funerals of my relatives or friends of my family. During
one year I went to funerals of four murder victims. Most of my non-Indian
friends have not seen a dead body or been to a funeral. Death was so
common on the reservation that I did not understand the implications of the
high death rate until after I moved away and was surprised to learn that I’ve
seen more dead bodies than my friends will probably ever see in their
lifetime.
Because of experiencing racial violence, I sometimes panic when I’m
the only non-white in a roomful of whites, even if they are my closest
friends; I wonder if I’ll leave the room alive. The seemingly copacetic gay
world of San Francisco becomes a mere dream after the panic leaves. I
think to myself that it’s truly insane for me to feel the panic. I want to
scream out my anger and disgust with myself for feeling distrustful of my
white friends and I want to banish the society that has fostered those
feelings of alienation. I wonder at the amount of assimilation which has
affected me and how long my “Indianness” will allow me to remain in a
city that is far removed from the lives of many Native Americans.
“Alienation” and “assimilation” are two common words used to
describe contemporary Indian people. I’ve come to despise those two words
because what leads to “alienation” and “assimilation” should not be so
concisely defined. And I generally mistrust words that are used to define
Native Americans and Brown People. I don’t like being put under a
magnifying glass and having cute liberal terms describe who I am. The
“alienation” or “assimilation” that I manifest is often in how I speak. There
isn’t necessarily a third world language but there is an Indian way of talking
that is an essential part of me. I like it, I love it, yet I deny it. I “save” it for
when I’m around other Indians. It is a way of talking that involves “Indian
humor” which I know for sure non-Indian people would not necessarily
understand.
Articulate. Articulate. I’ve heard that word used many times to
describe third world people. White people seem so surprised to find brown
people who can speak fluent english and are even perhaps educated. We
then become “articulate.” I think I spend a lot of time being articulate with
white people. Or as one person said to me a few years ago, “Gee, you don’t
seem like an Indian from the reservation.”
I often read about the dilemmas of contemporary Indians caught
between the white and Indian worlds. For most of us, it is an uneasy
balance to maintain. Sometimes some of us are not so successful with it.
Native Americans have a very high suicide rate.

When I was about 20, I dreamt of myself at the age of 25–26,

standing at a place on my reservation, looking to the North,
watching a glorious, many-colored horse galloping toward me
from the sky. My eyes were riveted and attracted to the beauty and
overwhelming strength of the horse. The horse’s eyes were staring
directly into mine, hypnotizing me and holding my attention.
Slowly from the East, an eagle was gliding toward the horse. My
attention began to be drawn toward the calm of the eagle but I
still did not want to lose sight of the horse. Finally the two met
with the eagle sailing into the horse causing it to disintegrate.
The eagle flew gently on.

I take this prophetic dream as an analogy of my balance between the

white (horse) and Indian (eagle) world. Now that I am 26, I find that I’ve
gone as far into my exploration of the white world as I want. It doesn’t
mean that I’m going to run off to live in a tipi. It simply means that I’m not
interested in pursuing a society that uses analysis, research, and
experimentation to concretize their vision of cruel destinies for those who
are not bastards of the Pilgrims; a society with arrogance rising, moon in
oppression, and sun in destruction.
Racism is not easy for me to write about because of my own racism
toward other people of color, and because of a complex set of “racisms”
within the Indian community. At times animosity exists between half-breed,
full-blood, light-skinned Indians, dark-skinned Indians, and non-Indians
who attempt to pass as Indians. The US government has practiced for many
years its divisiveness in the Indian community by instilling and
perpetuating these Indian vs. Indian tactics. Native Americans are the
foremost group of people who continuously fight against premeditated
cultural genocide.
I’ve grown up with misconceptions about Blacks, Chicanos, and
Asians. I’m still in the process of trying to eliminate my racist pictures of
other people of color. I know most of my images of other races come from
television, books, movies, newspapers, and magazines. Who can pinpoint
exactly where racism comes from? There are certain political dogmas that
are excellent in their “analysis” of racism and how it feeds the capitalist
system. To intellectually understand that it is wrong or politically incorrect
to be racist leaves me cold. A lot of poor or working-class white and brown
people are just as racist as the “capitalist pig.” We are all continually
pumped with gross and inaccurate images of everyone else and we all pump
it out. I don’t think there are easy answers or formulas. My personal
attempts at eliminating my racism have to start at the base level of those
mindsets that inhibit my relationships with people.
Racism among third world people is an area that needs to be discussed
and dealt with honestly. We form alliances loosely based on the fact that we
have a common oppressor, yet we do not have a commitment to talk about
our own fears and misconceptions about each other. I’ve noticed that
liberal, consciousness-raised white people tend to be incredibly polite to
third world people at parties or other social situations. It’s almost as if they
make a point to SHAKE YOUR HAND or to introduce themselves and then
run down all the latest right-on third world or Native American books
they’ve just read. On the other hand it’s been my experience that if there are
several third world gay people at a party, we make a point of avoiding each
other, and spend our time talking to the whites to show how sophisticated
and intelligent we are. I’ve always wanted to introduce myself to other third
world people but wondered how I would introduce myself or what would I
say. There are so many things I would want to say, except sometimes I don’t
want to remember I’m Third World or Native American. I don’t want to
remember sometimes because it means recognizing that we’re outlaws.
At the Third World Gay Conference in October 1979, the Asian and
Native American people in attendance felt the issues affecting us were not
adequately included in the workshops. Our representation and leadership
had minimal input which resulted in a skimpy educational process about our
struggles. The conference glaringly pointed out to us the narrow definition
held by some people that third world means black people only. It was a
depressing experience to sit in the lobby of Harambee House with other
Native Americans and Asians, feeling removed from other third world
groups with whom there is supposed to be this automatic solidarity and
empathy. The Indian group sat in my motel room discussing and
exchanging our experiences within the third world context. We didn’t spend
much time in workshops conducted by other third world people because of
feeling unwelcomed at the conference and demoralized by having an
invisible presence. What’s worse than being invisible among your own
kind?
It is of particular importance to us as third world gay people to begin a
serious interchange of sharing and educating ourselves about each other. 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. Being third world doesn’t always connote a
political awareness or activism. I’ve met a number of third world and
Native American lesbians who’ve said they’re just into “being themselves,”
and that politics has no meaning in their lives. I agree that everyone is
entitled to “be themselves” but in a society that denies respect and basic
rights to people because of their ethnic background, I feel that individuals
cannot idly sit by and allow themselves to be co-opted by the dominant
society. I don’t know what moves a person to be politically active or to
attempt to raise the quality of life in our world. I only know what motivates
my political responsibility … the death of Anna Mae Aquash—Native
American freedom fighter—“mysteriously” murdered by a bullet in the
head; Raymond Yellow Thunder—forced to dance naked in front of a white
VFW club in Nebraska—murdered; Rita Silk-Nauni—imprisoned for life
for defending her child; my dear friend Mani Lucas-Papago—shot in the
back of the head outside of a gay bar in Phoenix. The list could go on and
on. My Native American History, recent and past, moves me to continue as
a political activist.
And in the white gay community there is rampant racism which is
never adequately addressed or acknowledged. My friend Chrystos from the
Menominee Nation gave a poetry reading in May 1980, at a Bay Area
feminist bookstore. Her reading consisted of poems and journal entries in
which she wrote honestly from her heart about the many “isms” and
contradictions in most of our lives. Chrystos’ bluntly revealing observations
on her experiences with the white-lesbian-feminist-community are similar
to mine and are probably echoed by other lesbians of color.
Her honesty was courageous and should be representative of the kind
of forum our community needs to openly discuss mutual racism. A few
days following Chrystos’ reading, a friend who was in the same bookstore
overheard a white lesbian denounce Chrystos’ reading as anti-lesbian and
racist.
 A few years ago, a white lesbian telephoned me requesting an
interview, explaining that she was taking Native American courses at a local
university, and that she needed data for her paper on gay Native Americans.
I agreed to the interview with the idea that I would be helping a “sister” and
would also be able to educate her about Native American struggles. After
we completed the interview, she began a diatribe on how sexist Native
Americans are, followed by a questioning session in which I was to
enlighten her mind about why Native Americans are so sexist. I attempted
to rationally answer her inanely racist and insulting questions, although my
inner response was to tell her to remove herself from my house. Later it
became very clear how I had been manipulated as a sounding board for her
ugly and distorted views about Native Americans. Her arrogance and
disrespect were characteristic of the racist white people in South Dakota. If
I tried to point it out, I’m sure she would have vehemently denied her
racism.
During the Briggs Initiative2 scare, I was invited to speak at a rally to
represent Native American solidarity against the initiative. The person who
spoke prior to me expressed a pro-Bakke3 sentiment which the audience
booed and hissed. His comments left the predominantly white audience
angry and in disruption. A white lesbian stood up demanding that a third
world person address the racist comments he had made. The MC, rather
than taking responsibility for restoring order at the rally, realized that I was
the next speaker and I was also T-H-I-R-D-W-O-R-L-D!! I refused to
address the remarks of the previous speaker because of the attitudes of the
MC and the white lesbian that only third world people are responsible for
speaking out against racism. 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. It is not just MY responsibility to point out and educate
about racist activities and beliefs.
Redman, redskin, savage, heathen, injun, american indian, first
americans, Indigenous peoples, natives, amerindian, native american,
nigger, negro, black, wetback, greaser, mexican, Spanish, latin, hispanic,
chicano, chink, oriental, asian, disadvantaged, special interest group,
minority, third world, fourth world, people of color, illegal aliens—oh yes
about them, will the US government recognize that the Founding Fathers
(you know George Washington and all those guys) are this country’s first
illegal aliens.
We are named by others and we are named by ourselves.

Epilogue …

Following writing most of this, I went to visit my home in South Dakota. It

was my first visit in eight years. I kept putting off my visit year after year
because I could not tolerate the white people there and the ruralness and
poverty of the reservation. And because in the eight years since I left home,
I came out as a lesbian. My visit home was overwhelming. Floods and
floods of locked memories broke. I rediscovered myself there in the hills,
on the prairies, in the sky, on the road, in the quiet nights, among the stars,
listening to the distant yelps of coyotes, walking on Lakota earth, seeing
Bear Butte, looking at my grandparents’ cragged faces, standing under
wakiyan, smelling the Paha Sapa (Black Hills), and being with my precious
circle of relatives.
My sense of time changed, my manner of speaking changed, and a
certain freedom with myself returned.
I was sad to leave but recognized that a significant part of myself has
never left and never will. And that part is what gives me strength—the
strength of my people’s enduring history and continuing belief in the
sovereignty of our lives.

Notes
1. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
2. The 1978 (ultimately defeated) California Proposition 6 would have banned gays and lesbians
from working in California public schools. (Editor, 2015)
3. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was a landmark decision by the US Supreme
Court, which made impermissible the use of quotas on the basis of race, as part of UC’s
affirmative action admission policy. It also laid the groundwork for the eventual voter-approved
elimination of affirmative action in California’s university systems through Proposition 209 in
1996. (Editor, 2015)
“… And Even Fidel Can’t Change That!”
Aurora Levins Morales

Cherríe, you asked me to write about internationalism, and at first it made

sense … I’m a Latin woman in the United States, closely involved with
Latin American movements in the rest of the continent. I should write about
the connection. But when I tried, all I could think was: No, write about the
separation.

For me the point of terror, the point of denial is the New York Puerto Rican.
My mother was born in New York in 1930, raised in Spanish Harlem and
the Bronx. I represent the generation of return. I was born deep in the
countryside of Puerto Rico and except for four years when I was very
young, lived there until I was 13. For my mother, the Barrio is safety,
warmth. For me, it’s the fear of racist violence that clipped her tongue of all
its open vowels, into crisp, imitation British. She once told me her idea of
hell was to be a single mother of two children under five in the South
Bronx. I’m afraid of ever knowing what she meant.
Where I grew up, I fought battles to prove I was Puerto Rican with the
kids who called me “Americanita,” but I stayed on the safe side of that line:
Caribbean island, not Portah Ricah; exotic tropical blossom, not spic—
living halfway in the skin and separating myself from the dark, bad city
kids in Nueva York.

3
The point of terror, of denial, the point of hatred is the tight dress stretched
across my grandmother’s big breasts, the coquettish, well- made-up smile:
grandmother, aunt and greataunts all decked out in sex, talking about how
I’m pretty, talking about how men are only good for one thing, hating sex
and gloating over the hidden filthiness in everything, looking me over, in a
hurry to find me a boyfriend, and in the same breath: “You can’t travel
alone! You don’t know what men are like … they only want one thing …”
Women teaching women our bodies are disgusting and dirty, our desires are
obscene, men are all sick and want only one sickening thing from us.
Saying, you’ve got to learn how to hold out on ’em just enough to get what
you want. It’s the only item you can put on the market, so better make it go
far, and when you have to deliver, lie down and grit your teeth and bear it,
because there’s no escape.

And yet, I tell you, I love those women for facing up to the ugliness there.
No romance, no roses and moonlight and pure love. You say pure love to
one of these women and they snort and ask you what the man has between
his legs and is it pure? I love these women for the bitch sessions that pool
common knowledge and tell the young wife: “Oh, yes, the first time he
cheated on me I tried that, too, but he just beat me. Listen, don’t give him
the satisfaction. The next time …” These women don’t believe in the
sanctity of the marriage bond, the inviolable privacy of the husband-wife
unit. The cattiness is mixed with the information, tips. The misery is
communal.

Claustrophobia. A reality I can’t make a dent in … because it’s the misery

that’s communal. The resistance is individual and frowned upon. It rocks
the boat. How many times has a Latin woman stood up for me in private,
then stabbed me in the back when the moment comes for the support that
counts. How many times has a Latin woman used me to bitch to and then
gone running to men for approval, leaving me in the lurch. The anger is real
and deep. You have forced me to turn out of my own culture to find allies
worthy of the name; you have forced me into a room full of Anglo women
who nod sympathetically and say: “Latin men are soooo much worse than
Anglo men … Why the last time I was in Mexico, you couldn’t walk down
the streets without some guy … It must be so hard for you to be a Latin
feminist …” And not to betray you in the face of their racism, I betray
myself, and in the end, you, by not saying: It’s not the men who exile
me … it’s the women. I don’t trust the women.

Points of terror. Points of denial. Repeat the story that it was my

grandmother who went to look at apartments. Light skinned, fine, black
hair: I’m Italian, she would tell them, keeping the dark-skinned husband,
keeping the daughters out of sight. I have pretended that pain, that shame,
that anger never touched me, does not stain my skin. She could pass for
Italian. She kept her family behind her. I can pass for anyone. Behind me
stands my grandmother working at the bra and girdle factory, speaking with
an accent, lying to get an apartment in Puertoricanless neighborhoods.

Piri Thomas’ book Down These Mean Streets followed me around for years,
in the corner of my eye on bus terminal bookracks. Finally, in a gritted teeth
desperation I faced the damn thing and said, “OK, tell me.” I sweated my
way through it in two nights: Gang fights, knifings, robberies, smack,
prison. It’s the standard Puerto Rican street story, except he lived. The
junkies could be my younger brothers. The prisoners could be them. I could
be the prostitute, the welfare mother, the sister and lover of junkies, the
child of alcoholics. There is nothing but circumstance and good English,
nothing but my mother marrying into the middle class, between me and that
life.

8
The image stays with me of my mother’s family fleeing their
puertoricanness, the first spies on the block, behind them, the
neighborhoods collapsing into slums. There was a war, she told me. The
enemy was only a step behind. I borrow the pictures from my other family,
the nightmares of my Jewish ancestry, and imagine them fleeing through
the streets. My mother never went back to look. This year she saw on
television the ruins of the Tiffany Street of her childhood, unrecognizable,
bombarded by poverty and urban renewal into an image of some European
city: 1945. Like the Jews, like many people, the place she could have
returned to has been destroyed.

I saw a baby once, the same age as my fat, crowing baby brother, then six
months old. I was twelve, and under the influence of our Seventh Day
Adventist teacher some of the girls in the seventh grade took up a collection
for two poor families in the neighborhood. We bought them each one bag of
groceries. This baby was just a little bit of skin stretched over a tiny
skeleton. It hardly moved. It didn’t even cry. It just lay there. The woman’s
husband had left her. The oldest boy, he was 13 or 14, worked picking
coffee to help out. When we came the younger kids hid in the mother’s
skirts and she just stood there, crying and crying.
I ran straight home when we left and the first thing I did was to find
my brother and hug him very tightly. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon
feeding him.
If something had happened to my father, the ghost over my mother’s
shoulder would have caught up with us. Papi was our middle-class passport.
I grew up a professor’s daughter, on the road to college, speaking good
English. I can pass for anyone. Behind me stands my grandmother. Behind
me lie the mean streets. Behind me my little brother is nothing but skin and
skeleton.

10

Writing this I am browner than I have ever been. Spanish ripples on my

tongue and I want the accent. I walk through the Mission drinking in the
sounds. I go into La Borinqueña and buy yautía and plátano for dinner.
Facing up to the terror, ending the denial, refusing to obey the rule: “Don’t
talk bad about your own people in front of anyone else.” I have never
learned to dance salsa. My body goes rigid when the music plays. Oh yes, I
tap my feet, and now and then I do a few steps, swing around the room with
someone who doesn’t know more than I do … but if I’m in a Latin scene I
freeze. I can’t make my hips fluid or keep my feet from tripping. It’s the
perversion of sexuality that frightens me. It’s the way the women around me
exude a sexiness that has nothing to do with the heart. Of course Latin
Women love as well as any other women … but while the chilliest Anglo-
Saxon repression of sex pretends it simply doesn’t exist, Latin repression
says it’s a filthy fact of life, use it for what it’s worth … shake it in his face,
wear it as a decoy. It’s all over the floor and it’s cold and savage. It’s the
hatred of the powerless, turned crooked.

11

Sitting in the kitchen in oh-so-white New Hampshire with old friends,

mother and daughter, Ceci says, “It takes three generations. If you resolve
your relationship with your mother you’ll both change, and your daughter
will have it easier, but her daughter will be raised differently. In the third
generation the daughters are free.” I’m not thinking then of this essay, but
days later when I sit down again to work, the phrase keeps ringing: In the
third generation the daughters are free.

12

Don’t you think I’ve swallowed my mouthful of blood? It’s

different for a man. You’re too stubborn … you’ve always wanted
your own way. It was this way for my grandmother, it was this
way for my mother, it was this way for me … because this is the
way it is. God made men and women different and even Fidel
can’t change that! Anything is better than being alone.
—Older woman in Portrait of Teresa
Cuban film, 1979
My mother and I work to unravel the knot. The task is daily: bloody,
terrifying and necessary, and filled with joy.

13

The relationship between mother and daughter stands in the center of what I
fear most in our culture. Heal that wound and we change the world.
A revolution capable of healing our wounds. If we’re the ones who can
imagine it, if we’re the ones who dream about it, if we’re the ones who need
it most, then no one else can do it.

We’re the ones.

I Walk in the History of My People
Chrystos

There are women locked in my joints

for refusing to speak to the police
My red blood full of those
arrested, in flight, shot
My tendons stretched brittle with anger
do not look like white roots of peace
In my marrow are hungry faces who live on land the whites don’t want
In my marrow women who walk 5 miles every day for water
In my marrow the swollen faces of my people who are not allowed
to hunt
to move
to be

In the scars on my knee you can see children torn from their families
bludgeoned into government schools
You can see through the pins in my bones that we are prisoners
of a long war

My knee is so badly wounded no one will look at it

The pus of the past oozes from every pore
The infection has gone on for at least 300 years
My sacred beliefs have been made pencils, names of cities, gas stations
My knee is wounded so badly that I limp constantly
Anger is my crutch
I hold myself upright with it
My knee is wounded
see
How I Am Still Walking
 III

And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures

with You
Racism in the Women’s Movement
Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972
Mixed media assemblage, 11.75″ × 8″ × 2.75″, signed
Collection of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum;
purchased with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts
(selected by The Committee for the Acquisition of Afro-American Art)
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
Photograph by Joshua Nefsky
And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures with You
Racism in the Women’s Movement

The reason racism is a feminist issue is easily explained by the inherent definition of
feminism. Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color,
working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as
well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not
feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.1
—Barbara Smith

We women of color are the veterans of a class and color war that is still
escalating in the feminist movement. This section attempts to describe in
tangible ways how, under the name of feminism, white women of economic
and educational privilege have used that privilege at the expense of Third
World women. Although the original intent of including a section in this
anthology specifically about racism in the movement was to make a
connection with white women, it feels now more like a separation.
Things have gotten worse. In academic and cultural circles, Third
World women have become the subject matter of many literary and artistic
endeavors by white women, and yet we are refused access to the pen, the
publishing house, the galleries, and the classroom. “The lies, pretensions,
the snobbery & cliquishness The racism that bled through …” (Chrystos).
Our traditional native cultures are ripped off from us and are displayed as
the artifacts of “primitive” peoples by white Bohemian liberated women
headed for the West Coast. In leftist feminist circles we are dealt with as a
political issue, rather than as flesh and blood human beings. We represent
the party line, but the truth is, “We’re not as happy as we look/on
their/wall” (Carrillo). We have had it with the word “outreach” referring to
our joining racist white women’s organizations. The question keeps coming
up—where exactly then, is in? It smells like “white” to us. We have had it.
Repeatedly acknowledged throughout this section and infusing the
entire contents of this anthology is our understanding that theory alone
cannot wipe out racism. We do not experience racism, whether directed at
ourselves or others, theoretically. Neither do white women.
How does one then emotionally come to terms with racism? None of
us in this book can challenge others to confront questions that we ourselves
have not confronted. How do we deal with the ways in which this diseased
society has infused our very blood systems? How do we take personal
responsibility for our own racist actions and assumptions?
As Third World women we clearly have a different relationship to
racism than white women, but all of us are born into an environment where
racism exists. Racism affects all of our lives, but it is only white women
who can “afford” to remain oblivious to these effects. The rest of us have
had it breathing or bleeding down our necks. “Mama … Mama/Get off that
damn box and come home to me” (Rushin).
But you work with what you have, whatever your skin color. Racism is
societal and institutional. It implies the power to implement racist ideology.
Women of color do not have such power, but white women are born with it
and the greater their economic privilege, the greater their power. This is
how white middle-class women emerge among feminist ranks as the
greatest propagators of racism in the movement. Rather than using the
privilege they 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. Fear is a feeling—fear of losing one’s power, fear of being accused,
fear of a 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.
The women writing here are committed feminists.2 We are challenging
white feminists to be accountable for their racism because at the base we
still want to believe that they really want freedom for all of us. The letter
from Audre Lorde to Mary Daly appearing in this section is an example to
all of us of how we as feminists can criticize each other. It is an act of love
to take someone at her word, to expect the most out of a woman who calls
herself a feminist—to challenge her as you yourself wish to be challenged.
As women, we all know oppression on some level. We must use this
knowledge, as Rosario Morales suggests, to “identify, understand, and feel
with the oppressed as a way out of the morass of racism and guilt.”
 … . For “We are all in the same boat.”
And it is sinking fast.

Notes
1. From a talk given at the closing session at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)
Conference, May 1979; appeared in Frontiers 5, no. 1 (1980).
2. In our commitment to feminism, the specificity of how each of the writers herein experiences
racism—its physicality and ill spirit—is given uncensored voice. The late 1970s and early 1980s
was one of the most virulent periods of discord between white women and women of color in
the movement, due in part to the truly “minority” position women of color—especially lesbians
—held in the feminist organizations. By 1980, we were still in the early stages of organizing
autonomously as “feminists of color” and had just begun to politically find one another in
significant numbers. Bridge was part of that discovery. (Editor, 2015)
And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures with
You
Jo Carrillo

Our white sisters

radical friends
love to own pictures of us
sitting at a factory machine
wielding a machete
in our bright bandanas
holding brown yellow black red children
reading books from literacy campaigns
holding machine guns bayonets bombs knives

Our white sisters

radical friends
should think
again.
Our white sisters
radical friends
love to own pictures of us
walking to the fields in hot sun
with straw hat on head if brown
bandana if black
in bright embroidered shirts
holding brown yellow black red children
reading books from literacy campaigns
smiling.
Our white sisters radical friends
should think again.
No one smiles
at the beginning of a day spent
digging for souvenir chunks of uranium
of cleaning up after
our white sisters
radical friends

And when our white sisters

radical friends see us
in the flesh
not as a picture they own,
they are not quite as sure
if
they like us as much.
We’re not as happy as we look
on
their
wall.
Beyond the Cliffs of Abiquiu1
Jo Carrillo

She calls you a rock.

He calls you a rock.
They both agree that you
are unworthy
of anything
but a slow death.

Her skin is white;

more parched than
the land she hates.
Silver fades into her arm
turquoise matches
nothing
more than her
eyes
but she wears it.

two cliffs little trees lots of rocks

is this land nothing but a rock? She asks
while gracefully walking back to her
MG

OH, yes I know, I live here

in this desert
and let me tell you… !
The whole place is
parched.
Just one great big rock.
Let me see,
do I have time to put on my
my
my
squash blossom.

It’s Authentic Navajo Indian Laguna Pueblo

design from

Buen Muir Indian Trading Post

completely
staffed
by
whites
except of course
for the janitor.

How can it be
that the mines
the uranium cancer causing dangerous radon gas emitting mines
are worked by Navajos and other assorted
types
and the trading posts
are all
all
worked over
by whites?

The mines belong to them

too;
don’t enjoy the work as much?
Rather sell Authentic Navajo Hopi Zuni Indian made
real
live
Laguna Santa Ana Santo Domingos?

It’s
less
of a mess.

Oh, those Indians.

They are
all
just
drunks.
Can’t even go through Gallup
without seeing at least
at least
at least
ten of them.
Oh, let’s step into this Navajo rug shop
while we’re here.

Bet you don’t have that

in San Francisco Los Angeles New York
Albuquerque.
They are really lovely rugs
my whole house is done
in
Navajo rugs
it’s adobe
in Corrales
by the river
lots of
rich
whites
with Authentic Navajo Hopi Zuni Indian made real live
Laguna Santa Ana Santo Domingo
artifacts.

There is a village
over
that
hill.
 Note
1. My poem to the land that, along with South Dakota, is a “proposed National Sacrifice” area for
energy (uranium, coal, coal gasification, etc.).
I Don’t Understand Those Who Have Turned
Away from Me
Chrystos

5:23 a.m.—May 1980

I am afraid of white people Never admitted that before deep secret
I think about all the white women I knew in San Francisco Women
with Master’s degrees from Stanford University & cars that daddy bought,
women with straight white teeth & clear skins from thousands of years of
proper nutrition They chose to be poor They were quite convincing in the
role of oppressed victim I want to tell them to go down to Fillmore &
Haight & tell somebody about it Tell Jim my old landlord who picked
cotton since he was 6 moved here for a better life lost his hearing & his
teeth & his hair from working in the shipyards for 35 years The constant
vibration of his drill on the metal literally shook his teeth out He went bald
from always wearing a safety helmet He can’t hear after years of that racket
He worked so hard for 35 years & he is still poor They live on Webster
Street, across from the projects The house is an old Victorian which will not
be paid off unless he lives to be 89 which is unlikely.
I read the funniest line in a health book yesterday It said, that for some
“unknown” reason, more black people had hypertension than white people
Not funny No mystery Most Indian people don’t usually live long enough to
even GET hypertension All the deaths I carry so heavily Faces I knew Mani
murdered in Phoenix by whites outside a bar whites who still have not gone
to trial Ron dying of pneumonia I still mourn him death None of my
relatives have a degree from Stanford Neither did Jim So those poor white
girls are still suffering mightily in my old home town of San Francisco
It did not help that it occurred to me that no amount of education was
going to improve my lot in life if I didn’t also change my attitude about the
society I still think that 98% of what happens—liberal, conservative or
radical lesbian separatist is: bullshit My attitude is all I own so I quit school
 All the schools & crazy houses I was in were simply brainwashing &
most of the feminist movement that I worked so hard to be a part of was
propaganda This is heresy but it held no solution for me Surely Jane suffers
oppression on her job because she is a woman All the problems and issues
which feminism raises are valid & important It simply does not give me any
answers for correct behavior in my own life Certainly I won’t obey that
lesbian mafia nonsense that one must dress in a certain way or cut off one’s
hair to be real Those are all the most superficial rules silly I no longer
believe that feminism is a tool which can eliminate racism—or even
promote better understanding between different races & kinds of women I
have felt less understanding between different races & from many lesbian
women than I do from some straight people At least their heterosexual
indifference allows me more freedom to be myself I felt so much stricture
& censorship from lesbians I was supposed to be a carpenter to prove I was
a real dyke My differences were sloughed over None of them came to a
pow wow or an AIM1 fundraiser to see about me Above all I could not
enjoy & love being a woman Jane commented when I first met her that she
didn’t care for most lesbians because they didn’t like women didn’t like
themselves Of course it is extremely difficult to like oneself in a culture
which thinks you are a disease
Many of the lesbians I knew seemed to throw off the outer trappings of
their culture & were very vocal in criticizing it Yet, they had no joy, no new
roads Night after night in endless picky meetings discussing everyone’s
inadequacies & faults & the harm which men do or night after night in
dreary body shop bars drinking themselves into a stupor I worked so hard as
part of a local women’s coffeeshop & bookstore, harder than I’ve ever
worked I ordered for the kitchen, & the art shows, did shifts, brought
flowers, cleaned, met the pest man & phone man, did entertainment,
washed a million coffee cups Recently someone told me that a young
lesbian whose parents have given her a law practice, commented that she
remembered me I didn’t work she said all I did was talk to people I
remember her too she was one of the thousands of women whose names &
faces I memorized & tried to understand only to have them disappear after 3
months or whenever they found a lover After 3 1/2 years I had so little left
of myself so many bitter memories of women who disrespected me &
others A woman who called herself a communist but supported capitalist
enterprises of women, rather than our brave collective worker-owned effort
The lies, pretensions, the snobbery & cliquishness The racism which bled
through every moment at every level The terrifying & useless struggle to be
accepted The awful gossip, bitchiness, backbiting & jealousy The gross
lack of love
I left the women’s movement utterly drained I have no interest in
returning My dreams of crossing barriers to true understanding were false
Most of the white women I thought I was close to want nothing to do with
me now Perhaps white women are so rarely loyal because they do not have
to be There are thousands of them to pick up & discard No responsibility to
others The bathing beauties They want the status of reality & respect
without labor Respect us simply because we exist Give us what we want
now My bitterness distorts my words
I don’t understand those who turned away from me

Note
1. American Indian Movement.
Asian Pacific American Women and Feminism
Mitsuye Yamada

Most of the Asian Pacific American women I know agree that we need to
make ourselves more visible by speaking out on the condition of our sex
and race on certain political issues that concern us. Some of us feel that
visibility through the feminist perspective is the only logical step for us.
However, this path is fraught with problems that we are unable to solve
among us, because in order to do so, we need the help and cooperation of
the white feminist leaders, the women who coordinate programs, direct
women’s buildings, and edit women’s publications throughout the county.
Women’s organizations tell us they would like to have us “join” them and
give them “input.” These are the better ones; at least they know we exist
and feel we might possibly have something to say of interest to them, but
every time I read or speak to a group of people about the condition of my
life as an Asian Pacific woman, it is as if I had never spoken before, as if I
were speaking to a brand new audience of people who had never known an
Asian Pacific woman who is other than the passive, sweet etc. stereotype of
the “Oriental” woman.
When Third World women are asked to speak representing our racial
or ethnic group, we are expected to move, charm or entertain, but not to
educate in ways that are threatening to our audiences. We speak to
audiences that sift out those parts of our speech (if what we say does not fit
the image they have of us), come up to shake our hands with “That was
lovely my dear, just lovely,” and go home with the same mindset they come
in with. No matter what we say or do, the stereotype still hangs on. I am
weary of starting from scratch each time I speak or write, as if there were
no history behind us, of hearing that among the women of color, Asian
women are the least political, or the least oppressed, or the most polite. It is
too bad not many people remember that one of the two persons in Seattle
who stood up to contest the constitutionality of the Evacuation Order in
1942 was a young Japanese American woman. As individuals and in
groups, we Asian Pacific women have been (more intensively than ever in
the past few years) active in community affairs and speaking and writing
about our activities. From the highly political writings published in Asian
Women in 1971 (incisive and trenchant articles, poems, and other pieces), to
more recent voices from the Basement Workshop in New York City to
Unbound Feet in San Francisco, as well as those Asian Pacific women
showcased at the Asian Pacific Women’s Conferences in New York, Hawaii
and California this year, these all tell us we have been active and vocal. And
yet, we continue to hear, “Asian women are of course traditionally not
attuned to being political,” as if most other women are; or that Asian
women are too happily bound to their traditional roles as mothers and
wives, as if the same cannot be said of a great number of white American
women among us.
When I read in Plexus recently that at a Workshop for Third World
women in San Francisco, Cherríe Moraga exploded with “What each of us
needs to do about what we don’t know is to go look for it,” I felt like
standing up and cheering her. She was speaking at the Women’s Building to
a group of white sisters who were saying, in essence, “It is your
responsibility as Third World women to teach us.” If the majority culture
knows so little about us, it must be our problem, they seem to be telling us;
the burden of teaching is on us. I do not want to be unfair; I know
individual women and some women’s groups that have taken on the
responsibility of teaching themselves through reaching out to women of
color, but such gestures by the majority of women’s groups are still
tentatively made because of the sometimes touchy reaction of women who
are always being asked to be “tokens” at readings and workshops.
Earlier this year, when a group of Asian Pacific American women
gathered together in San Francisco poet Nellie Wong’s home to talk about
feminism, I was struck by our general agreement on the subject of feminism
as an ideal. We all believed in equality for women. We agreed that it is
important for each of us to know what it means to be a woman in our
society, to know the historical and psychological forces that have shaped
and are shaping our thoughts, which in turn determine the directions of our
lives. We agreed that feminism means a commitment to making changes in
our own lives and a conviction that as women we have the equipment to do
so. One by one, as we sat around the table and talked (we women of all ages
ranging from our early twenties to the mid-fifties, single and married,
mothers and lovers, straight women and lesbians), we knew what it was we
wanted out of feminism, and what it was supposed to mean to us. For
women to achieve equality in our society, we agreed, we must continue to
work for a common goal.
But there was a feeling of disappointment in that living room toward
the women’s movement as it stands today. One young woman said she had
made an effort to join some women’s groups with high expectations but
came away disillusioned because these groups were not receptive to the
issues that were important to her as an Asian woman. Women in these
groups were, she said, “into pushing their own issues” and were no different
from the other organizations that imposed opinions and goals on their
members rather than having them shaped by the needs of the members in
the organizations. Some of the other women present said that they felt the
women’s organizations with feminist goals are still “a middle-class
women’s thing.” This pervasive feeling of mistrust toward the women in the
movement is fairly representative of a large group of women who live in the
psychological place we now call Asian Pacific America. A movement that
fights sexism in the social structure must deal with racism, and we had
hoped the leaders in the women’s movement would be able to see the
parallels in the lives of the women of color and themselves, and would
“join” us in our struggle and give us “input.”
It should not be difficult to see that Asian Pacific women need to
affirm our own culture while working within it to change it. Many of the
leaders in the women’s organizations today had moved naturally from civil
rights politics of the ’60s to sexual politics, while very few of the Asian
Pacific women who were involved in radical politics during the same period
have emerged as leaders in these same women’s organizations. Instead they
have become active in groups promoting ethnic identity, most notably
ethnic studies in universities, ethnic theater groups or ethnic community
agencies. This doesn’t mean that we have placed our loyalties on the side of
ethnicity over womanhood. The two are not at war with one another; we
shouldn’t have to sign a “loyalty oath” favoring one over the other.
However, women of color are often made to feel that we must make a
choice between the two.
If I have more recently put my energies into the Pacific Asian
American Center (a job center for Asians established in 1975, the only one
of its kind in Orange County, California) and the Asian Pacific Women’s
Conferences (the first of its kind in our history), it is because the needs in
these areas are so great. I have thought of myself as a feminist first, but my
ethnicity cannot be separated from my feminism.
Through the women’s movement, I have come to truly appreciate the
meaning of my mother’s life and the lives of immigrant women like her. My
mother, at nineteen years of age, uprooted from her large extended family,
was brought to this country to bear and raise four children alone. Once here,
she found that her new husband who had been here as a student for several
years prior to their marriage was a bachelor at heart and had no intention of
changing his lifestyle. Stripped of the protection and support of her family,
she found the responsibilities of raising us alone in a strange country almost
intolerable during those early years. I thought for many years that my
mother did not love us because she often spoke of suicide as an easy way
out of her miseries. I know now that for her to have survived “just for the
sake” of her children took great strength and determination.
If I digress it is because I, a second-generation Asian American
woman who grew up believing in the American Dream, have come to know
who I am through understanding the nature of my mother’s experience; I
have come to see connections in our lives as well as the lives of many
women like us, and through her I have become more sensitive to the needs
of Third World women throughout the world. We need not repeat our past
histories; my daughters and I need not merely survive with strength and
determination. We can, through collective struggle, live fuller and richer
lives. My politics as a woman are deeply rooted in my immigrant parents’
and my own past.
Not long ago at one of my readings a woman in the audience said she
was deeply moved by my “beautifully tragic but not bitter camp poems
which were apparently written long ago,”1 but she was distressed to hear
my poem “To a Lady.” “Why are you, at this late date, so angry, and why
are you taking it so personally?” she said. “We need to look to the future
and stop wallowing in the past so much.” I responded that this poem is not
all about the past. I am talking about what is happening to us right now,
about our nonsupport of each other, about our noncaring about each other,
about not seeing connections between racism and sexism in our lives. As a
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.
 These are the connections we expected our white sisters to see. It
should not be too difficult, we feel, for them to see why being a feminist
activist is more dangerous for women of color. They should be able to see
that political views held by women of color are often misconstrued as being
personal rather than ideological. Views critical of the system held by a
person in an “out group” are often seen as expressions of personal angers
against the dominant society. (If they hate it so much here, why don’t they
go back?) Many lesbians I know have felt the same kind of frustration when
they supported unpopular causes regarded by their critics as vindictive
expressions to “get back” at the patriarchal system. They, too, know the
disappointments of having their intentions misinterpreted.
In the 1960s when my family and I belonged to a neighborhood
church, I became active in promoting the Fair Housing Bill, and one of my
church friends said to me, “Why are you doing this to us? Haven’t you and
your family been happy with us in our church? Haven’t we treated you
well?” I knew then that I was not really part of the church at all in the eyes
of this person, but only a guest who was being told I should have the good
manners to behave like one.
Remembering the blatant acts of selective racism in the past three
decades in our country, our white sisters should be able to see how tenuous
our position in this country is. Many of us are now third- and fourth-
generation Americans, but this makes no difference; periodic conflicts
involving Third World peoples can abruptly change white Americans’
attitudes toward us. This was clearly demonstrated in 1941 to the Japanese
Americans who were in hot pursuit of the great American Dream, who went
around saying, “Of course I don’t eat Japanese food, I’m an American.” We
found our status as true-blooded Americans was only an illusion in 1942
when we were singled out to be imprisoned for the duration of the war by
our own government.
The recent outcry against the Iranians because of the holding of
American hostages tells me that the situation has not changed since 1941.2
When I hear my students say “We’re not against the Iranians here who are
minding their own business. We’re just against those ungrateful ones who
overstep our hospitality by demonstrating and badmouthing our
government,” I know they speak about me.
Asian Pacific American women will not speak out to say what we have
on our minds until we feel secure within ourselves that this is our home too;
and until our white sisters indicate by their actions that they want to join us
in our struggle because it is theirs also. This means a commitment to a truly
communal education where we learn from each other because we want to
learn from each other, the kind of commitment we do not seem to have at
the present time. I am still hopeful that the women of color in our country
will be the link to Third World women throughout the world, and that we
can help each other broaden our visions.

Notes
1. Mitsuye Yamada. Camp Notes and Other Poems (San Francisco: Shameless Hussy Press, 1976).
2. The “Iran Hostage Crisis” began on November 4, 1979, with the siege of the US Embassy in
Tehran. Captors demanded the extradition of the Shah from the United States in order to stand
trail for his crimes against the Iranian people. Fifty-two US citizens were held for 444 days.
(Editor, 2015)
“—But I Know You, American Woman”
Judit Moschkovich

I am Latina, Jewish, and an immigrant (all at once). When I tell people who I am, I usually
see a puzzled look on their face. I am likely to tell them, “I realize that you are a little
confused by me—how I can be both Jewish and Latin American at the same time—but just
take my word for it. It is possible!

The preceding words were originally written in response to a letter which

appeared in a women’s newspaper with national distribution. This letter
reflected the blatant ignorance most Anglo-American women have of Latin
cultures. My response was directed to all women of the dominant American
culture.1 The Anglo woman’s letter represented spoken and unspoken views
and feelings that I have repeatedly encountered in many Anglo-American
women.
My immediate reaction to reading the letter was: don’t speak about
someone/something unless you can admit your ignorance on the subject. Or,
“you don’t know me, but I know you, American women.”
I believe that lack of knowledge about other cultures is one of the basis
for cultural oppression. I do not hold any individual American woman
responsible for the roots of this ignorance about other cultures; it is
encouraged and supported by the American educational and political
system, and by the American media. I do hold every woman responsible for
the transformation of this ignorance.
In her letter, the Anglo woman seemed to ask for information about
Latin culture.2 She wanted to know what we want as Latin people, what we
are struggling for, etc. First of all, it is hard for me to respond to even a
simple request for more information about Latin cultures without
experiencing strong and conflicting feelings. We’ve all heard it before: it is
not the duty of the oppressed to educate the oppressor. And yet, I often do
feel pressured to become an instructor, not merely a “resource person.” I
don’t usually hear, “Hey, what do you think of the work of such and such
Latin American feminist author,” but rather, “Teach me everything you
know.” Latin American women write books, music, etc. A great deal of
information about Latin America is readily available in most libraries and
bookstores. I say: read and listen. We may, then, have something to share.
Second, it is very hard to respond to a request for information when it
follows paragraph after paragraph that belittle and insult Latin culture.
Anyone who was raised and educated in this country has a very good
chance of being ignorant about other cultures, whether they be minority
cultures in this country or those of other countries. It’s a sort of cultural
isolationism, a way of life enforced on the people in this country so as to let
them have a free conscience with respect to how they deal with the rest of
the world or with subcultures in America. Notice the lack of emphasis on
learning other languages, and the lack of knowledge even about where other
countries are located. Often, I am asked questions like, “Is Argentina in
Europe or Africa?” or “Don’t you speak Portuguese down there?” How can
one feel guilt about screwing over someone/some country she knows
nothing about?
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.
My Latin culture means many things to me: the food I like to eat, the
music I love, the books I read, the language I speak, the land and trees I
remember in another country, the jokes I tell, how I am used to kissing and
hugging people when I greet them, etc., etc., etc. … I could go on forever. It
also means the things I’d like to change in Latin culture and I’m not
speaking of changing men, but of changing systems of oppression. As a
result of these changes, I do not foresee a culture-less vacuum because “all
cultures are bad so I don’t want any of them.” That culture-less vacuum
proposed would actually be the American culture of French Fries and
Hamburgers (or soyburgers), American music on the radio (even if it’s
American women’s music on a feminist radio show), not kissing and
hugging every time you greet someone, etc. And it would ultimately still be
the culture of exploitation of other countries/cultures combined with
ignorance about them.
I want to illustrate more specifically some of the uninformed
statements made in the Anglo woman’s letter. The fascist government of
Spain which she referred to (and suggests as Latin people’s sole nation of
heritage) was made possible by ample economic and political support from
the US, as are multiple other fascist governments in the world right now,
particularly in the Third World. When people are not democratically
represented by their government, there is a real difference between the
policies of that government and the country’s people/culture. If one knows
about the bitter struggle of the Spanish people against fascism during the
Spanish Civil War, and during Franco’s regime, one would never equate
Spanish with fascist. I do not equate “American” with imperialist/racist, but
I do equate American people who do not transform their ignorance about
“non-dominant” cultures and their relationship to these cultures with
imperialism and racism.
As to the “historical” accident that both North and South America are
not dominated by Latin (i.e., non-Anglo) culture, I don’t call the
appropriation of Mexican land an accident, but an imperialist/expansionist
move by the United States. Latin America is a mixture of Native, Black,
Spanish and sometimes other European cultures, but it is dominated by
American mass culture as Latin American economic systems are dominated
by American interests (this applies to most Latin American countries, not
all). In Latin America, in addition to our own cultural expressions, we
watch American TV shows, listen to American music on the radio, wear
American jeans (if we can afford them); in other words, we do anything that
is economically profitable to America. In comparison, how often do you
hear songs in Spanish on the radio in the US or see a Spanish show on TV?
I’m not talking about radio or TV shows by and for the Latin community;
I’m talking about mainstream American media.
No one will deny that the Spanish conquistadores did in fact conquer
the native people of Latin America, and that the latter are still being
oppressed there. It is important, however, to know that the Latin American
people residing in the US are not some vague “Spanish” conqueror race, but
are a multi-racial/cultural people of Native, Black and European
background. Latin American culture is quite different from Anglo culture in
that each country has retained and integrated the Indigenous cultures in
food, music, literature, etc. For example the folk music of Argentina is
largely Native Indian folk music, played on traditional and European
instruments, speaking about traditional themes, using lyrics in Spanish
and/or Indigenous languages. In the US, you don’t often think of Native
American music as “American folk music.”
I’m sick and tired of continually hearing about the destructive aspects
of Latin American culture, especially from women who don’t know the
culture and can only repeat well-known and worn out myths. Let Latina
women tell you what’s going on, the good and the bad. I’ve lived there and
I damn well know what it’s like. Listen to what I have to say about my
culture, rather than believe hearsay, myths or racist stereotypes. No one ever
talks about “terminally depressed Scandinavians,” or the cutthroat
competition instilled by American culture, or the lack of warmth and
physical contact in Anglo culture. These are all destructive aspects of Anglo
culture, and they cannot be ignored.
The unspoken question always seems to be: “Aren’t Latin (or Black,
etc.) men more macho and women more oppressed in that culture?” My
answers to that are: 1) It is absurd to compare sexist oppression. Oppression
is oppression in whatever form or intensity. 2) Sexist and heterosexist
oppression is more or less visible depending on how communicative people
in a culture are. That Anglo culture is more Puritan and less visibly
expressive does not mean it is less sexist. 3) Most of Latin America is a
land economically colonized by the US, and as such can’t be compared with
a colonizing culture (US). Women’s condition in Latin America would be
much better were they not living in colonized countries. 4) Most important,
are we as feminists concerned with men or with women? There is always a
women’s culture within every culture. Why is everyone so willing to accept
the very male view of Latin American culture as consisting simply of
macho males and Catholic priests? There are scores of strong women living
in Latin America today and our history is full of famous and lesser known
strong women. Are they to be ignored as women have always been ignored?
Culture is not really something I have a choice in keeping or
discarding. It is in me and of me. Without it I would be an empty shell and
so would anyone else. There was a psychology experiment carried out once
in which someone was hypnotized and first told they had no future; the
subject became happy and as carefree as a child. When they were told they
had no past they became catatonic.
Anglo people should realize when you say we should discard all
cultures and start anew that you are speaking English with all its emotional
and conceptual advantages and disadvantages.3 You’re not really about to
change your taste in food, your basic style of relating to people, nor the way
you talk.
I’ve heard many people say, “Immigrants to this country should learn
English, act American, and stop trying to keep their own culture. That’s
what I would do if I went to another country!” I say Bullshit! Being an
immigrant or a bicultural/bilingual person is something that can sometimes
be understood only when experienced.4 Would an American woman move
to another country and not hold dear her memories of childhood places and
people? Would she not remember with longing some special song or food
that she has no access to in her new country? And would she not feel her
communication limited, no matter how well she learned her second
language, because some very deep, emotional things can only be expressed
in one’s native tongue? Or would she speak to her parents in her newly
adopted language? From my personal experience I can say the American
woman would experience all of these things. It is very hard to deny who
you are, where you come from, and how you feel and express yourself (in
the deepest possible sense) without ending up hating yourself.
In conclusion, I hope these words express my frustration. When
Anglo-American women speak of developing a new feminist or women’s
culture, they are still working and thinking within an Anglo-American
cultural framework. This new culture would still be just as racist and
ethnocentric as patriarchal American culture. I have often confronted the
attitude that anything that is “different” is male. Therefore if I hold on to
my Latin culture I am holding on to hateful patriarchal constructs.
Meanwhile, the Anglo woman who deals with the world in her Anglo way,
with her Anglo culture, is being “perfectly feminist.”
I would like us some day to get past the point of having to explain and
defend our different cultures (as I am doing here). For that to happen the
process of learning about other cultures must be a sharing experience. An
experience where American women learn on their own without wanting to
be spoon-fed by Latinas, but don’t become experts after one book, one
conversation, or one stereotype. It is a delicate balance which can only be
achieved with caring and respect for each other.
Everything I have written about here has been from my personal
experience as an immigrant to this country as a teenager. I’m by no means
an expert, but these are issues I constantly deal with in myself and with
others. I do not speak for all Latinas, or for all non-Anglo-American
women. I would like to acknowledge the support and feedback I received
from my friends throughout the writing of the original letter. They were all
Anglo-American women (at the time there were no Latinas around me); and
they cared enough to get beyond their guilt and/or ignorance.

Notes
1. When I say “American culture” I obviously do not include Afro-American, Native American,
Asian American, Chicana, etc. I am speaking of the Anglo culture which dominates American
society.
2. When I say “Latin culture” I mean Latin American cultures, which have a history of expression
different from the European Latin cultures (French, Italian, etc.).
3. Let me illustrate some differences in language. English expository writing goes in a straight line
(sound familiar?) from introductory paragraph, to thesis sentence, to conclusion. Spanish
composition follows a form more like a zig-zag, sometimes deviating from straight, linear
thinking. I am fighting against this when I write in English so I can be understood by English
readers.
4. As a Latina and an immigrant, I cannot ignore the fact that many Hispanics have been in this
country for more generations than Anglos. The Hispanic cultures in the West and Southwest
were established long before their land was colonized by Anglos. The Hispanic people have as
much right to their cultural heritage as any Anglo (if not more so, since they were here first).
The Black Back-Ups
Kate Rushin

This is dedicated to Merry Clayton, Fontella Bass,

Vonetta Washington, Carolyn Franklin, Yolanda McCullough,
Carolyn Willis, Gwen Guthrie, Helaine Harris and Darlene Love.
This is for all of the Black women who sang back-up for
Elvis Presley, John Denver, James Taylor, Lou Reed.
Etc. Etc. Etc.

I said Hey Babe

Take a Walk on The Wild Side
I said Hey Babe
Take a Walk on The Wild Side

And the colored girls say

Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo ooooo

This is for my Great-Grandmother Esther, my Grandmother

Addie, my Grandmother called Sister, my Great-Aunt Rachael
my Aunt Gladys, my Aunt Helen, my Aunt Ellie, my Cousin
Barbara, my Cousin Dottie and my Great-Great-Aunt Vene.

This is dedicated to all of the Black women riding on buses

and subways back and forth to The Main Line, Haddonfield,
Cherry Hill and Chevy Chase. This is for the women who
spend their summers in Rockport, Newport, Cape Cod and
Camden, Maine. This is for the women who open bundles of
dirty laundry sent home from ivy-covered campuses.
My Great-Aunt Rachel worked for The Carters
ever since I can remember.
There was The Boy whose name I never knew,
and there was The Girl whose name was Jane.

Great-Aunt Rachael brought Jane’s dresses for me to wear.

Perfectly Good Clothes.

And I should’ve been glad to get them.

Perfectly Good Clothes.
No matter they didn’t fit quite right.
Perfectly Good Clothes
brought home in a brown paper bag
with an air of accomplishment and excitement.
Perfectly Good Clothes
which I hated.

At school in Ohio,
I swear there was always somebody
telling me that the only person
in their whole house who listened and understood them,
despite the money and the lessons
was the housekeeper.
And I knew it was true,
but what was I supposed to say?

I know it’s true. I watch her getting off the train,

moving slowly toward the Country Squire
station wagon with her uniform in her
shopping bag. And the closer she gets to the car,
the more the two little kids jump and laugh
and even the dog is about to turn inside out
because they just can’t wait until she gets there.
Edna. Edna. Wonderful Edna.

But Aunt Edna to me, or Gram, or Miz Johnson,

or, Sister Johnson on Sundays.
And the colored girls say
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo
Do dodo do do dodododo ooooo

This is for Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen and Ethel Waters.

This is for Sapphire, Saphronia, Ruby Begonia and Aunt Jemima.

Aunt Jemima on the pancake box.

Aunt Jemima on the pancake box?
AuntJemimaonthepancakebox?
Ainchamamaonthepancakebox?
Ain’t chure Mama on the pancake box?

Mama … Mama …
Get off that damn box and come home to me.
And my Mama leaps off that box and
she swoops down in her nurses’ cape
which she wears on Sundays and for
Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting
and she wipes my forehead and she
fans my face and she makes me a cup o’ tea.
And it don’t do a thing for my real pain except
she is my mama.

Mama Mommy Mammy

Maa-mee Maa-mee
I’d Walk a Mill-Yon Miles
For One o’ Your Smiles …
This is for The Black Back-Ups.
This is for my mama and your mama,
my grandma and your grandma.
This is for the thousand thousand Black Back-Ups.

And the colored girls say

Do dodo do do dodododo
do dodo
dodo
do
do
The Pathology of Racism
A Conversation with Third World Wimmin

doris davenport

A few years ago in New Haven, I tried to relate to feminism through a local
womon’s1 center (located in a Yale basement). I was politely informed that I
should “organize” with Black wimmin. In other words, get out. I wanted to
start several projects that would include more third world wimmin,2 but I
was told to talk to black wimmin about that. In short, white only. Then, the
socialist study group I was interested in was suddenly closed just at the time
I wanted to join. And once, in a wimmin’s group when a discussion of men
came up, it was revealed that half the white wimmin there feared black
men, which included me (from the way they glared at me). In other words:
nigger, go home.
Last year in Los Angeles, after volunteering to work for a local white
feminist magazine, repeatedly offering my services and having my ideas
and poems rejected, I was finally called to be one of the few token black
wimmin at a reception for Ntozake Shange. And the beat, like the song
says, goes on. From coast to coast, the feminist movement is racist, but that
news is old and stale by now. It is increasingly apparent that the problem is
white wimmin.
We, third world wimmin, always discuss this fact. (Frankly, I’m a little
tired of it.) However, we usually discuss the varied, yet similar
manifestations of racism, without going into why white wimmin are racist.
In this article, which I conceive of as a conversation with third world
wimmin, I want to explore the whys. I don’t see the point of further
cataloguing my personal grievances against white racist feminists. You
know. Whatever you have experienced, I have too. Extrapolate a little. I
think that one of our limitations in dealing with this issue is that we stay on
the surface. We challenge symptoms of the disease while neglecting the
causes. I intend to examine the causes.
 If I were a white feminist and somebody called me a racist, I’d
probably feel insulted (especially if I knew it was at least partially true). It’s
like saying someone has a slimey and incurable disease. Naturally, I would
be reactionary and take out my health department/liberal credentials, to
prove I was clean. But the fact is, the word “racism” is too simplistic, too
general, and too easy. You can use the word and not say that much, unless
the term is explained or clarified. Once that happens, racism looks more
like a psychological problem (or pathological aberration) than an issue of
skin color.
By way of brief clarification, we experience white feminists and their
organizations as elitist, crudely insensitive, and condescending. Most of the
feminist groups in this country are examples of this elitism. (This anthology
came to be as a result of that.) It is also apparent that white feminists still
perceive us as the “Other,” based on a menial or sexual image: as more
sensual, but less cerebral; more interesting, perhaps, but less intellectual;
and more oppressed, but less political than they are. (If you need specific
examples of this, think about your own experiences with them.)
When we attend a meeting or gathering of theirs, we’re seen in only
one of two limited or oppressive ways: as being whitewashed and therefore
sharing all their values, priorities, and goals, etc.; or, if we (even
accidentally) mention something particular to the experience of black
wimmin, we are seen as threatening, hostile, and subversive to their
interests. So when I say racist, these are some of the things I mean. I know
this, and so do many white feminists. Because of their one-dimensional and
bigoted ideas, we are not respected as feminists or wimmin. Their perverse
perceptions of black wimmin mean that they continue to see us as “inferior”
to them, and therefore, treat us accordingly. Instead of alleviating the
problems of black wimmin, they add to them.
Although black and white feminists can sometimes work together for a
common goal with warmth and support, and even love and respect each
other occasionally, underneath there is still another message. That is that
white feminists, like white boys and black boys, are threatened by us.
Moreover, white feminists have a serious problem with truth and
“accountability” about how/why they perceive black wimmin as they do.
For example, in a long, and long-winded article, “Disloyal to
Civilization: Feminism, Racism, and Gynephobia,”3 Adrienne Rich
attempted to address an issue similar to this one. Instead she did what she
accused other feminists of doing, she “intellectualized the issues.” She
evaded it, after apologetically (or proudly, it’s hard to tell) saying that “the
most unconditional, tender … intelligent love I received was given me by a
black woman.” (Translated, she had a black mammy as a child.4) Then, she
hid behind a quasi-historical approach that defused the subject. After about
fifteen pages, she got close, but apparently also got scared, and backed off.
It seems she found it hard, after all, to tell the truth and be “accountable.”
On the other hand, and as a brief but necessary digression, black
wimmin don’t always tell the whole truth about and to white wimmin. We
know, for example, that we have at least three distinct areas of aversion to
white wimmin which affect how we perceive and deal with them: aesthetic,
cultural, and social/political. Aesthetically (& physically) we frequently
find white wimmin repulsive. That is, their skin colors are unaesthetic
(ugly, to some people). Their hair, stringy and straight, is unattractive. Their
bodies: rather like misshapen lumps of whitish clay or dough, that
somebody forgot to mold in-certain-areas. Furthermore, they have a strange
body odor.
Culturally, we see them as limited and bigoted. They can’t dance.
Their music is essentially undanceable too, and unpleasant. Plus, they are
totally saturated in western or white American culture with little knowledge
or respect for the cultures of third world people. (That is, unless they intend
to exploit it.) The bland food of white folks is legendary. What they call
partying is too low keyed to even be a wake. (A wake is when you sit up all
night around the casket of a dead person.) And it goes on and on.
Socially, white people seem rather juvenile and tasteless. Politically,
they are, especially the feminists, naïve and myopic. Then too, it has always
been hard for us (black folk) to believe that whites will transcend color to
make political alliances with us, for any reason. (The women’s movement
illustrates this point.)
We have these aversions for one thing, because we saw through the
“myth” of the white womon. The myth was that white wimmin were the
most envied, most desired (and beautiful), most powerful (controlling white
boys) wimmin in existence. The truth is that black people saw white
wimmin as some of the least enviable, ugliest, most despised and least
respected people, period. From our “close encounters” (i.e., slavery,
“domestic” workers, etc.) with them, white people increasingly did seem
like beasts or subnormal people. In short, I grew up with a certain kind of
knowledge that all black folk, especially wimmim, had access to.
This knowledge led to a mixture of contempt and repulsion. I honestly
think that most black feminists have some of these feelings. Yet, we
constantly keep them hidden (at least from white wimmin), try to transcend
them, and work towards a common goal. A few of us even see beyond the
so-called privilege of being white, and perceive white wimmin as very
oppressed, and ironically, invisible. This perception has sometimes been
enough for us to relate to white feminists as sisters.
If some of us can do this, it would seem that some white feminists
could too. Instead, they cling to their myth of being privileged, powerful,
and less oppressed (or equally oppressed, whichever it is fashionable or
convenient to be at the time) than black wimmin. Why? Because that is all
they have. That is, they have defined, or re-defined, themselves and they
don’t intend to let anything or anybody interfere. Somewhere deep down
(denied and almost killed) in the psyche of racist white feminists there is
some perception of their real position: powerless, spineless, and invisible.
Rather than examine it, they run from it. Rather than seek solidarity with
wimmin of color, they pull rank within themselves. Rather than attempt to
understand our cultural and spiritual differences, they insist on their own
limited and narrow views. In other words, they act out as both “white
supremacists” and as a reactionary oppressed group.
As white supremacists, they still try to maintain the belief that white is
right, and “godly” (sic). No matter how desperately they try to overcome it,
sooner or later it comes out. They really have a hard time admitting that
white skin does not insure a monopoly on the best in life, period.
Such a “superiority complex” is obviously a result of compensation. I
mean, if whites really knew themselves to be superior, racism could not
exist. They couldn’t be threatened, concerned, or bothered. I am saying that
the “white supremacist” syndrome, especially in white feminists, is the
result of a real inferiority complex, or lack of self-identity. Just as a macho
male uses wimmin to define himself or to be sure he exists, white feminists
use wimmin of color to prove their (dubious) existence in the world.
Anyone familiar with the literature and psychology of an oppressed or
colonized group knows that as they initially attempt to redefine themselves,
they react. Their immediate mental, spiritual, and physical environment is
chaotic and confused. The fact is, white wimmin are oppressed; they have
been “colonized” by white boys, just as third world people have. Even
when white wimmin “belonged” to white boys they had no reality. They
belonged as objects, and were treated as such. (As someone else has noted,
the original model for colonization was the treatment of white wimmin.)
Nobody has yet sufficiently researched or documented the collective
psychology of oppressed white wimmin. So consider this as a thesis: they
know. And so do I. The reality of their situation is the real pits. Lately,
having worked free of the nominal and/or personal control of white boys,
white wimmin are desperately reactionary. As a result, they identify with
and encourage certain short-sighted goals and beliefs. Their infatuation with
the word “power” in the abstract is an example of this: power to them
mainly means external established power or control. They have minimal, if
any, knowledge of personal power. But most important, as a reactionary
oppressed group, they exhibit a strange kind of political bonding or elitism,
where white wimmin are the only safe or valid people to be with; all others
are threatening. Clearly, this state of mind is a political dead-end, and the
reasons for it stem from their great confusion.
So this is my contribution to the conversation. The cause of racism in
white feminists is their bizarre oppression (and suppression). This, I
contend, is what lies beneath the surface. This pathological condition is
what they have to admit and deal with, and what we should start to consider
and act on. Too often, we discuss their economic freedom while ignoring
other aspects of life. We sometimes dwell at length on their color, forgetting
that they are still wimmin in a misogynist culture. They have been seriously
mutated as a result.
In other words, their elitism and narrow-minded rigidity are defense
mechanisms and that, in part, is why they create “alternatives” for
themselves and put up psychological signs saying white women only. Part
of the reason is fear, as a result of centuries of living with dogs and having
no identities. Now, they are threatened by anyone different from them in
race, politics, mannerisms, or clothing. It’s partly a means of self-protection
but that does not excuse it. Feminism either addresses itself to all wimmin,
or it becomes even more so just another elitist, prurient white organization,
defeating its own purposes.
As a partial solution to some of the above, and to begin to end some of
the colossal ignorance that white feminists have about us, we (black and
white feminists) could engage in “c.r.”5 conversations about and with each
other. If done with a sense of honesty, and a sense of humor, we might
accomplish something. If overcoming our differences were made a priority,
instead of the back-burner issue that it usually is, we might resolve some of
our problems.
On one hand, my experiences with white feminists prevent me from
seeing dialogue as anything but a naïve beginning. I honestly see our trying
to “break into” the white feminist movement as almost equivalent to the
old, outdated philosophy of integration and assimilation. It is time we
stopped this approach. We know we have no desire to be white. On the
other hand, we know we have some valid concerns and goals that white
feminists overlook. By now, in fact, a few of their organizations are as rigid
and stagnant as any other “established” institution, with racism included in
the by-laws.
So, sisters, we might as well give up on them, except in rare and
individual cases where the person or group is deliberately and obviously
more evolved mentally and spiritually. This is, un-racist. We should stop
wasting our time and energy, until these wimmin evolve. Meanwhile, we
can re-channel our energies toward ourselves.
We can start to develop a feminist movement based on the realities and
priorities of third world wimmin. Racism would have to be a priority.
Misogyny is another major problem of third world wimmin. Not only that,
many of our communities are more homophobic (or “lesbophobic”) than
white ones. Also, a lot of our sisters are straight, and have no intention of
changing. We cannot afford to ignore them and their needs, nor the needs of
many third world wimmin who are both feminists and nationalists; that is,
concerned with our sex and also our race. Finally, a lot of third world
wimmin are ignorant about each other. We have yet to make our own
realities known to ourselves, or anyone else. So we really do have a lot
more to concentrate on beside the pathology of white wimmin. What we
need to do is deal with us, first, then maybe we can develop a wimmin’s
movement that is more international in scope and universal in application.
It is time we stopped letting the rest of this oppressive society dictate
our behavior, devour our energies, and control us, body and soul. It is time
we dealt with our own energies, and our own revolutionary potential, like
the constructive and powerful forces that they are. When we do act on our
power and potential, there will be a real feminist movement in this country,
one that will finally include all wimmin.
 Notes
1. The spelling of “womon” was popular among some lesbian feminists in the 1970s and early
’80s. It was used to symbolically “liberate” the nomenclature of the female sex from the word
“man.” (Editor, 2015)
2. As above: “wimmin” instead of “wo(men).” (Editor, 2015)
3. Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (New York: Norton, 1979), 280.
4. Adrienne Rich writes “As a child raised in what was essentially the South, Baltimore in the
segregated 1930s, I had from birth not only a white, but a black mother.” (Of Woman Born:
Motherhood as Experience and Institution: New York: Norton, 1976), 253. (Editor, 2015)
5. “Consciousness Raising.” (Editor, 2015)
We’re All in the Same Boat
Rosario Morales

November 1979
I am not white. I am not middle class.
I am white skinned and puertorican. I was born into the working class and
married into the middle class. I object to the label white and middle class
both because they don’t include my working class life and my
puertoricanness, but also because “white & middle class” stands for a kind
of politics. Color and class don’t define people or politics. I get angry with
those in the women’s movement and out of it who deal with class & color
as if they defined politics and people.
My experience in the Puerto Rican communist & independence
movements has made me suspicious of and angry at Puerto Rican (& other
Latin American) activist women. They have been sexist and supported the
macho line that we needed to fight against imperialism first—only later
could we think about women as women. I desperately want Latina women in
the feminist movement while I fear the entry of hispanic & often black
women because I fear they will play an anti-feminist role.
Racism is an ideology. Everyone is capable of being racist whatever
their color and condition. Only some of us are liable to racist attack.
Understanding the racist ideology—where and how it penetrates—is what is
important for the feminist movement, not “including” women of color or
talking about “including” men. Guilt is a fact for us all, white & colored: an
identification with the oppressor and oppressive ideology. Let us, instead,
identify, understand, and feel with the oppressed as a way out of the morass
of racism and guilt.
I want to be whole. 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.
April, 1980
This society this incredible way of living divides us by class by color It
says we are individual and alone and don’t you forget it It says the only way
out of our doom of our sex our class our race is some individual gift and
character and hard work and then all we get all we ever get is to change
class or color or sex to rise to bleach to masculinize an enormous game of
musical chairs and that’s only at its fairy tale Horatio Alger best that’s only
at its best
From all directions we get all the beliefs to go with these divisions we
believe all kinds of things about: what real men really are what women
must want what black people feel and smell like what white people do and
deserve how rich people earn their comforts and cadillacs how poor people
get what’s coming to them
O we are all racist we are all sexist some of us only some of us are the
targets of racism of sexism of homophobia of class denigration but we all
all breathe in racism with the dust in the streets with the words we read and
we struggle those of us who struggle we struggle endlessly endlessly to
think and be and act differently from all that
Listen you and listen hard I carry within me a vicious antisemite voice
that says jew him down that says dirty jew that says things that stop me
dead in the street and make the blood leave my face I have fought that voice
for 45 years all the years that I lived with and among jews who are almost
me whose rhythms of speech and ways of laughing are close beside me are
dear to me whose sorrows reach deep inside me that voice that has tried to
tell me that that love and identification are unreal fake cannot be and I
refuse it I refuse its message
I carry a shell a white and crisp voiced shell to hide my brown golden
soft spanish voiced inner self to pass to hide my puertoricanness
I carry a pole 18 inches long to hold me at the correct distance from
black-skinned people
I carry hard metal armor with spikes with shooting weapons in every
joint with fire breathing from every hole to protect me to prepare me to
assault any man from 13 to 89
I am a whole circus by myself a whole dance company with stance and
posture for being in middle class homes in upper class buildings for talking
to men for speaking with blacks for carefully angling and directing for
choreographing my way thru the maze of classes of people and places thru
the little boxes of sex race class nationality sexual orientation intellectual
standing political preference the automatic contortions the exhausting
camouflage with which I go thru this social space called

CAPITALIST PATRIARCHY

a daunting but oh so nicely covering name this is no way to live Listen

listen with care class and color and sex do not define people do not define
politics a class society defines people by class a racist society defines
people by color We feminists socialists radicals define people by their
struggles against the racism sexism classism that they harbor that surrounds
them
So stop saying that she acts that way because she’s middle class that
that’s all you can expect from that group because it’s white that they’re just
men, quit it!
We know different things some very much more unpleasant things if
we’ve been women poor black or lesbian or all of those we know different
things depending on what sex what color what lives we live where we grew
up What schooling what beatings with or without shoes steak or beans but
what politics each of us is going to be and do is anybody’s guess
Being female doesn’t stop us from being sexist we’ve had to choose
early or late at 7 14 27 56 to think different dress different act different to
struggle to organize to picket to argue to change other women’s minds to
change our own minds to change our feelings ours yours and mine
constantly to change and change and change to fight the onslaught on our
minds and bodies and feelings
I’m saying that the basis of our unity is that in the most important way
we are all in the same boat all subjected to the violent pernicious ideas we
have learned to hate that we must all struggle against them and exchange
ways and means hints and how tos that only some of us are victims of
sexism only some of us are victims of racism of the directed arrows of
oppression but all of us are sexist racist all of us.
An Open Letter to Mary Daly
Audre Lorde

Dear Mary,
Thank you for having Gyn/Ecology sent to me. So much of it is full of
import, useful, generative, and provoking. As in Beyond God the Father,
many of your analyses are strengthening and helpful to me. Therefore, it is
because of what you have given to me in the past work that I write this
letter to you now, hoping to share with you the benefits of my insights as
you have shared the benefits of yours with me.
This letter has been delayed because of my grave reluctance to reach
out to you, for what I want us to chew upon here is neither easy nor simple.
The history of white women who are unable to hear black women’s words,
or to maintain dialogue with us, is long and discouraging. But for me to
assume that you will not hear me represents not only history, but an old
pattern of relating, sometimes protective and sometimes dysfunctional,
which we, as women shaping our future, are in the process of shattering, I
hope.
I believe in your good faith toward all women, in your vision of a
future within which we can all flourish, and in your commitment to the hard
and often painful work necessary to effect change. In this spirit I invite you
to a joint clarification of some of the differences which lie between us as a
black and a white woman.
When I started reading Gyn/Ecology, I was truly excited by the vision
behind your words, and nodded my head as you spoke in your first passage
of myth and mystification. Your words on the nature and function of the
Goddess, as well as the ways in which her face has been obscured, agreed
with what I myself have discovered in my searches through African
myth/legend/religion for the true nature of old female power.
So I wondered, why doesn’t Mary deal with Afrekete as an example?
Why are her goddess-images only white, western-european, judeo-
christian? Where was Afrekete, Yemanje, Oyo and Mawulisa? Where are
the warrior-goddesses of the Vodun, the Dahomey Amazons and the
warrior-women of Dan? Well, I thought, Mary has made a conscious
decision to narrow her scope and to deal only with the ecology of western-
european women.
Then I came to the first three chapters of your second passage, and it
was obvious that you were dealing with non-european women, but only as
victims and preyers-upon each other. I began to feel my history and my
mythic background distorted by the absence of any images of my
foremothers in power. Your inclusion of African genital mutilation was an
important and necessary piece in any consideration of female ecology, and
too little has been written about it. But to imply, however, that all women
suffer the same oppression simply because we are women, is to lose sight of
the many varied tools of patriarchy. It is to ignore how those tools are used
by women without awareness against each other.
To dismiss our black foremothers may well be to dismiss where
european women learned to love. As an African-American woman in white
patriarchy, I am used to having my archetypal experience distorted and
trivialized but it is terribly painful to feel it being done by a woman whose
knowledge so much matches my own. As women-identified women, we
cannot afford to repeat these same old destructive, wasteful errors of
recognition.
When I speak of knowledge, as you know, I am speaking of that dark
and true depth which understanding serves, waits upon, and makes
accessible through language to ourselves and others. It is this depth within
each of us that nurtures vision.
What you excluded from Gyn/Ecology dismissed my heritage and the
heritage of all other non-european women, and denied the real connections
that exist between all of us.
It is obvious that you have done a tremendous amount of work for this
book. But simply because little material on non-white female power and
symbol exists in white women’s words from a radical feminist perspective,
to exclude this aspect of connection from even comment in your work is to
deny the fountain of non-european female strength and power that nurtures
each of our visions. It is to make a point by choice.
Then to realize that the only quotations from black women’s words
were the ones you used to introduce your chapter on African genital
mutilation, made me question why you needed to use them at all. For my
part, I felt that you had in fact misused my words, utilized them only to
testify against myself as a woman of color. For my words which you used
were no more, nor less, illustrative of this chapter, than “Poetry Is Not a
Luxury” or any number of my other poems might have been of many other
parts of Gyn/Ecology.
So the question arises in my mind, Mary, do you ever really read the
work of black women? Did you ever read my words, or did you merely
finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably
support an already-conceived idea concerning some old and distorted
connection between us? This is not a rhetorical question. To me this feels
like another instance of the knowledge, crone-logy and work of women of
color being ghettoized by a white woman dealing only out of a patriarchal
western-european frame of reference. Even your words on page 49 of
Gyn/Ecology: “The strength which Self-centering women find, in finding
our Background, is our own strength, which we give back to our Selves”
has a different ring as we remember the old traditions of power and strength
and nurturance found in the female bonding of African women. It is there to
be tapped by all women who do not fear the revelation of connection to
themselves.
Have you read my work, and the work of other black women, for what
it could give you? Or did you hunt through only to find words that would
legitimize your chapter on African genital mutilation in the eyes of other
black women? And if so, then why not use our words to legitimize or
illustrate the other places where we connect in our being and becoming? If,
on the other hand, it was not black women you were attempting to reach, in
what way did our words illustrate your point for white women?
Mary, I ask that you be aware of how this serves the destructive forces
of racism and separation between women—the assumption that the herstory
and myth of white women is the legitimate and sole herstory and myth of
all women to call upon for power and background, and that non-white
women and our herstories are noteworthy only as decorations, or examples
of female victimization. I ask that you be aware of the effect that this
dismissal has upon the community of black women, and how it devalues
your own words. This dismissal does not essentially differ from the
specialized devaluations that make black women prey, for instance, to the
murders even now happening in your own city.1 When patriarchy dismisses
us, it encourages our murderers. When radical lesbian feminist theory
dismisses us, it encourages its own demise.
This dismissal stands as a real block to communication between us.
This block makes it far easier to turn away from you completely than to
attempt to understand the thinking behind your choices. Should the next
step be war between us, or separation? Assimilation within a solely
western-european herstory is not acceptable.
Mary, I ask that you re-member what is dark and ancient and divine
within your self that aids your speaking. As outsiders, we need each other
for support and connection and all the other necessities of living on the
borders. But in order to come together we must recognize each other. Yet I
feel that since you have so completely un-recognized me, perhaps I have
been in error concerning you and no longer recognize you.
I feel you do celebrate differences between white women as a creative
force towards change, rather than a reason for misunderstanding and
separation. But you fail to recognize that, as women, those differences
expose all women to various forms and degrees of patriarchal oppression,
some of which we share, and some of which we do not. For instance, surely
you know that for non-white women in this country, there is an 80 percent
fatality rate from breast cancer; three times the number of unnecessary
eventrations, hysterectomies and sterilizations as for white women; three
times as many chances of being raped, murdered, or assaulted as exist for
white women. These are statistical facts, not coincidences nor paranoid
fantasies. I had hoped the lesbian consciousness of having been “other”
would make it easier to recognize the differences that exist in the history
and struggle of black women and white women.
Within the community of women, racism is a reality force within my
life as it is not within yours. The white women with hoods on in Ohio
handing out KKK literature on the street may not like what you have to say,
but they will shoot me on sight. (If you and I were to walk into a classroom
of women in Dismal Gulch, Alabama, where the only thing they knew
about each of us was that we were both Lesbian/Radical/Feminist, you
would see exactly what I mean.)
The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true,
but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries. Nor do the
reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries, either. To deal with
one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well
as our difference.
For then beyond sisterhood, is still racism.
We first met at the MLA2 panel, “The Transformation of Silence into
Language and Action.” Shortly before that date, I had decided never again
to speak to white women about racism. I felt it was wasted energy, because
of their destructive guilt and defensiveness, and because whatever I had to
say might better be said by white women to one another, at far less
emotional cost to the speaker, and probably with a better hearing. This letter
attempts to break this silence.
I would like not to have to destroy you in my consciousness. So as a
sister Hag, I ask you to speak to my perceptions.
Whether or not you do, I thank you for what I have learned from you.
This letter is in repayment.
In the hands of Afrekete,
Audre Lorde
May 6, 1979

Notes
1. In the spring of 1979, twelve black women were murdered in the Boston area.
2. Modern Language Association.
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the
Master’s House
Comments at “The Personal and the Political” Panel
(Second Sex Conference October 29, 1979)

Audre Lorde

I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities
conference a year ago, with the understanding that I would be commenting
upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American
women; difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. For the absence of
these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and
the political.
It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of
feminist theory in this time and in this place without examining our many
differences, and without a significant input from poor women, black and
third-world women, and lesbians. And yet, I stand here as a black lesbian
feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this
conference where the input of black feminists and lesbians is represented.
What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where
racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable. To read this program is to
assume that lesbian and black women have nothing to say of existentialism,
the erotic, women’s culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or
heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and political
terms when even the two black women who did present here were literally
found at the last hour? What does it mean when the tools of a racist
patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means
that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.
The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the
consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this
conference and within the papers presented here. For example, in a paper on
material relationships between women, I was conscious of an either/or
model of nurturing which totally dismissed my knowledge as a black
lesbian. In this paper there was no examination of mutuality between
women, no systems of shared support, no interdependence as exists
between lesbians and women-identified-women. Yet it is only in the
patriarchal model of nurturance that women “who attempt to emancipate
themselves pay perhaps too high a price for the results,” as this paper states.
For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not
pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real
power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a
patriarchal world. For it is only under a patriarchal structure that maternity
is the only social power open to women.
Interdependency between women is the only way to the freedom
which allows the “I” to “be,” not in order to be used, but in order to be
creative. This is a difference between the passive “be” and the active
“being.”
Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the
grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference
in our lives. For difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund
of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a
dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become
unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths,
acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways to actively “be”
in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where
there are no charters.
Within the interdependence of mutual (non-dominant) differences lies
that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and
return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to
effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is
that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.
As women, we have been taught to either ignore our differences or to
view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for
change. Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable
and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But
community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic
pretense that these differences do not exist.
 Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of
acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of
difference; those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who
are older, know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to
stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common
cause with those others identified as outside the structures, in order to
define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to
take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will
never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat
him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine
change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define
the master’s house as their only source of support.
Poor and third world women know there is a difference between the
daily manifestations and dehumanizations of marital slavery and
prostitution, because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. The Black
panelists’ observation about the effects of relative powerlessness and the
differences of relationship between black women and men from white
women and men illustrate some of our unique problems as black feminists.
If white american feminist theory need not deal with the differences
between us, and the resulting difference in aspects of our oppressions, then
what do you do with the fact that the women who clean your houses and
tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for
the most part, poor and third world women? What is the theory behind
racist feminism?
In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the
groundwork for political action. The failure of the academic feminists to
recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the
first patriarchal lesson. Divide and conquer, in our world, must become
define and empower.
Why weren’t other black women and third world women found to
participate in this conference? Why were two phone calls to me considered
a consultation? Am I the only possible source of names of black feminists?
And although the black panelist’s paper ends on an important and powerful
connection of love between women, what about interracial co-operation
between feminists who don’t love each other?
In academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is often
“We did not know who to ask.” But that is the same evasion of
responsibility, the same cop-out, that keeps black women’s art out of
women’s exhibitions, black women’s work out of most feminists
publications except for the occasional “Special Third World Women’s
Issue,”1 and black women’s texts off of your reading lists. But as Adrienne
Rich pointed out in a recent talk, white feminists have educated themselves
about such an enormous amount over the past ten years, how come you
haven’t also educated yourselves about Black women and the differences
between us—white and black—when it is key to our survival as a
movement?
Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of
male ignorance, and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This
is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied
with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of black and
third world women to educate white women, in the face of tremendous
resistance, as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint
survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist
patriarchal thought.
Simone de Beauvoir once said:

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that

we must draw strength to live and our reasons for acting.

Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this
place and this time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep
place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any
difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the
political can begin to illuminate all of our choices.

Note
1. Conditions of Brooklyn, NY, is a major exception. It has fairly consistently published the work
of women of color before it was “fashionable” to do so. (Editor, 1981)
 IV

Between the Lines

On Culture, Class, and Homophobia
Happy/L.A. Hyder, New Country Daughter/Lebanese American, 1981
Black and white photograph, originally printed from two negatives, 11″ x 14″
Collection of the artist
Between the Lines
On Culture, Class, and Homophobia

I do not believe/our wants have made all our lies/holy.

—Audre Lorde1

What lies between the lines are the things that women of color do not tell
each other. There are reasons for our silences: the change in generation
between mother and daughter, the language barriers between us, our sexual
identity, the educational opportunities we had or missed, the specific
cultural history of our race, the physical conditions of our bodies and our
labor.
As Audre Lorde states in the preceding section, “Difference is that raw
and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.” It is
critical now that Third World feminists begin to speak directly to the
specific issues that separate us. We cannot afford to throw ourselves
haphazardly under the rubric of “Third World Feminism” only to discover
later that there are serious differences between us which could collapse our
dreams, rather than fuse alliances.
As Third World women, we understand the importance, yet limitations
of race ideology to describe our total experience. Culture differences get
subsumed when we speak of “race” as an isolated issue: where does the
Black Puerto Rican sister stake out her alliance in this country, with the
Black community or the Latina? And color alone cannot define her status in
society. How do we compare the struggle of the middle-class Black woman
with those of the light-skinned Latina welfare mother? Further, how each of
us perceives our ability to be radical against this oppressive state is largely
affected by our economic privilege and our specific history of colonization
in the US. Some of us were brought here centuries ago as slaves, others had
our land of birthright taken away from us, some of us are the daughters and
granddaughters of immigrants, others of us are still newly immigrated to the
US.
Repeated throughout this section is each woman’s desire to have all of
her sisters of color actively identified and involved as feminists. One of the
biggest sources of separation among women of color in terms of feminism
has been homophobia. This fear that we (whatever our sexuality) breathe in
every day in our communities never fully allows us to feel invulnerable to
attack on our own streets, and sometimes even in the homes we grew up in
(let alone in the white man’s world). So often it is the fear of lesbianism
which causes many of us to feel our politics and passion are being ignored
or discounted by other Third World people. “There’s nothing to be
compared with how you feel when you’re cut cold by your own …”
(Barbara Smith). But we refuse to make a choice between our cultural
identity and sexual identity, between our race and our femaleness. We even
claim lesbianism as an “act of resistance” (Clarke) against the same forces
that silence us as people of color.
We write letters home to Ma.
Surfacing from these pages again and again is the genuine sense of
loss and pain we feel when we are denied our home because of our desire to
free ourselves as specifically female persons. So, we turn to each other for
strength and sustenance. We write letters to each other incessantly. Across a
kitchen table, Third World feminist strategy is plotted. We talk long hours
into the night. It is when this midnight oil is burning, in those after hours,
that we secretly reclaim our goddesses and our female-identified cultural
tradition. “I got myself home, lit me some candles … put on some Dinah
and Aretha …” (Rushin).
The difference that we have feared to mention because of our urgent
need for solidarity with each other begins to be spoken to on these pages,
but also the similarities that so often go unrecognized—that a light-skinned
Latina could feel “at home” and “safe” (Morales) among her Afro-
American sisters—that among many of us there is a deep-rooted
identification and affinity which we were not, logically, supposed to feel
toward each other living in segregated white-america.
We turn to each other to make family and even there, after the
exhilaration of our first discovery of each other subsides, we are forced to
confront our own lack of resources as Third World women living in the US.
Without money, without institutions, without one community center to call
our own we so often never get as far as dreamed while plotting in our
kitchens. We disappoint each other. Sometimes we even die on each other.
How to reconcile with the death of a friend, the death of a spirit?
We begin by speaking directly to the deaths and disappointments. Here
we begin to fill in the spaces of silence between us. For between these
seemingly irreconcilable lines—the class lines, the politically correct lines,
the daily lines we run down to each other to keep difference and desire at a
distance—the truth of our connection lies.
“Just keep saying it, Girl, you’ll get whole” (Rushin).

Note
1. “Between Ourselves,” The Black Unicorn (New York: Norton, 1978), 112.
The Other Heritage
Rosario Morales

For June Jordan and Teish and all other Black women at the San Francisco
Poetry Workshop; January 1980.

I forgot I forgot the other heritage the other strain refrain the silver thread
thru my sound the ebony sheen to my life to the look of things to the sound
of how I grew up which was in Harlem right down in Spanish Harlem El
Barrio and bounded I always say to foreigners from Minnesota Ohio and
Illinois bounded on the North by Italians and on the South by Black Harlem
A library in each of these almost forbidden places so no wonder I didn’t
take off with books till I hit the South Bronx What I didn’t forget was the
look of Ithaca Rochester Minneapolis and Salt Lake bleached bleeded and
bleached the street full of white ghosts like Chinese visions And the first
time Dick and I drove back thru New York past Amsterdam Avenue right
thru the heart of Harlem I breathed again safe brown and black walking the
streets safe My mami taught me my teacher taught me everybody taught me
watch out black smelly savage keep out of the way I did too so how come I
come to feel safe! when I hit Harlem when I hit a city with enough color
when a city gets moved in on when Main Street Vermont looks mottled
agouti black and brown and white when the sounds of the english Black
folk speak and the sounds of Spanish wiggle thru the clean lit air I still shy
and start from black men from about thirteen on but then I shy and start
from all men starting from when they think to be men and so do the things
men do my mami taught me that and that stuck but then I learnt that on my
own too I got myself a clean clear sense of danger that’s what smells not
black skin but danger stalking the streets for me I can smell it a mile away
wafting to me in the breeze I keep downwind raise my head to sniff the air I
only muse and rest my neck when in the herd and in the day and loping thru
people traffic on the streets surrounded by the sounds of wheeled traffic in
the streets I think and plan and forget and forget to look but not alone and
not at nite I lift my head I sniff I smell the danger and the wheel and run
long before he thinks maybe she looks about right a morsel for my appetite
I bound away and pant safe for this time safe but all I feel when I sit down
with you black woman the only danger in my air is from some whirring
voice inside that always says you don’t belong and if you don’t utter just
just right they will know you don’t belong and toss you out and I feel that
every time with every group of any color no matter what they speak but
what I feel inside nowhere near that grating prating voice is well OK! this
sounds just right this here music is music to my ears here I hear something
that feels like oh like Carlos Gardel moaning his tangoes like the special
beat caribbean drums do I forgot this heritage african Black up here in this
cold place the sound of african in english of drums in these musics I forgot I
breathed you with my air and declared fine and when you’re not there I
look and ask for where you’ve gone but I know I know why I forgot I’m not
supposed to remember what I do remember is to walk in straight and white
into the store and say good morning in my see how white how upper class
how refined and kind voice all crisp with consonants bristling with syllables
protective coloring in racist fields looks white and crisp like cabbage looks
tidy like laid out gardens like white aprons on black dresses like please and
thank you and you’re welcome like neat and clean and see I swept and
scrubbed and polished ain’t I nice que hay de criticar will I do will I pass
will you let me thru will they let me be not see me here beneath my skin
behind my voice crouched and quiet and so so still not see not hear me there
where I crouch hiding my eyes my indian bones my spanish sounds
muttering mierda que gente fría y fea se creen gran cosa aí escupe chica en
su carifresca en su carifea méate ahí en el piso feo y frío yo valgo más que
un piso limpio yo valgo más yo valgo cágate en l’alfombra chica arráncale
el pelo yo quiero salir de aquí yo quiero salir de tí yo quiero salir you see
she’s me she’s the me says safe sarita safe when I see you many and black
around the table behind me in the big room and up in front June Jordan how
you belt it out and how I take it in right to where she sits brown and golden
and when she and I laughed big last nite I was not “too loud” I was not “too
much” I was just right just me just brown and pink and full of drums inside
beating rhythm for my feet my tongue my eyes my hands my arms
swinging and smacking I was just right just right just right sépanlo niñas
m’hijas trigueñas bellas sépalo June Jordan mujer feroz aquí me quedo y
aquí estoy right!
The Tired Poem: Last Letter from a Typical
(Unemployed) Black Professional Woman
Kate Rushin

So it’s a gorgeous afternoon in the park.

It’s so nice you forget your Attitude
(the one your mama taught you)
the one that says: Don’t mess with me.
You forget until you hear all this whistling and
lip-smacking. You whip around and say,
“I ain’t no damn dog.” It’s a young guy.
His mouth drops open. “Excuse me, Sister.
How you doin’?” You lie and smile and say,
“I’m doing good, everything’s cool, Brother.”

Then, five minutes later: “Hey you Sweet Devil.

Hey Girl, come here.” You tense, sigh, calculate.
You know the lean boys and bearded men are
cousins and lovers and friends.
You’ve listened to your uncle, after he’s had a drink,
talking about how he has to scuffle to get by and
how he’d wanted to be an engineer.
You talk to Jocko who wants to be a singer
buy some clothes, get a house for his mother.

The Soc. and Psych. books say you’re domineering and

you’ve been to enough Sisters-Are-Not-Taking-Care-Of-Business
discussions to know where you went wrong. It’s decided
it had to be the day you decided to go to school.
Still, you remember the last time you said “Hey,”
so you keep on walking. “What? You too good to speak?
Don’t nobody want you no way.”
So, you go home, sit on the front steps and listen to your
neighbor’s son brag about girls. He has pictures of them all.
“This real cute one was supposed to go to college.
She knew she could get pregnant. I’ll just say it’s not mine.”

On the back of a picture of a girl in a cap and gown,

written in a child’s round print are the words,
“I love you in my own strange way. Thank you.”

So, you go into the house,

flip through a magazine and there is
An-Ode-To-My-Black-Queen poem.
It’s the kind where The Brother thanks
all of The Sisters who endured.
This thank-you poem is really
no consolation at all, unless, you believe
what the man you met on the train told you
(the Black man who worked for the State
Department and had lived in five countries).
He said, “Dear, you were born to suffer.
Why don’t you give me your address and
I’ll come visit?”

So you try to talk to your friend about the train and

the park and everything and how it all seems connected,
and he says, “You’re just a Typical Black
Professional Woman; some Sisters know how to deal.”
He goes on to say how you have always had the advantage.
You have to stop to think about that one.
Maybe you are supposed to be grateful for the sweaty,
beefy-faced white businessmen who try to pick you up at lunchtime.
You wonder how many times your friend has had pennies thrown at him,

how many times he’s been felt up in the subway,

how many times he’s been cussed out on the street,
how many times he’s been offered $10 for a piece of himself.
$10 for a piece …
So, you’re waiting for the bus and you look up from your book.
A young man is asking if you want to make some money, and
you think how you only get $15 for spending all day with 30 kids.
You remember he could be your brother or cousin.
You begin to explain how $10 wouldn’t pay for
what you’d have to give up. He pushes a handful of sticky,
crumpled dollars in your face. “Why not? You think I can’t pay?
Look at that roll. Don’t tell me you don’t need the money,
’cause I know you do … I’ll give you 15.”

You remember a joke you heard … but it isn’t funny.

You wonder if he would at least give you the money and
not beat you up. Still, you’re very cool and say, “No thanks.
You should look for somebody you care about
who cares about you.” He waves you off.
“Get outta my face. I don’t have time for that.
And remember, you blew it.”

Then your voice gets loud and fills the night street.
Your bus comes, the second shift people file on.
The night watchmen and nurse’s aides look at you like
you’re crazy. “Get on the damn bus.” He turns away.
Your bus pulls off. There is no one on the street but you.
And then, it is very quiet.
To Be Continued …
Kate Rushin

You didn’t think I was going to stand on that corner by myself,

(arms and legs like boards, mouth full of cement) forever, now did you?
Got myself together and grabbed the first cab I saw.
(Blew my budget for the week.)

I got myself home, lit me some candles and some sandalwood,

put on some Dinah and Aretha, took myself a bath,
made myself some grits and eggs,
got on the phone and called up my Girlfriend.

I told her everything that had been going on and you know what she said?
She said, Girl, I know what you mean. I said, for real, don’t you think
I’m crazy?
Listen, she said, only crazy you are is thinking you owe something to
some fool
come walking up in your face, intruding on your life, talking trash.

Think about it. How it sound you feeling ashamed ’cause somebody
come treating you like you was somebody’s pork chop?
Don’t worry about it. When you got something to say, say it.
Just make sure you’re talking to somebody who shows some interest.

Well, I started thinking about what my Girlfriend said,

and then something clicked. Then it all dawned on me.
Me and my Girlfriend you understand,
we been friends for years.

Now, whenever I get uptight, I remember what she told me:

Keep moving. Keep breathing. Stop apologizing and keep on talking.
When you get scared, keep talking anyway. Tell the truth like Sojourner
Truth.
Spill all the beans. Let all the cats out of all the bags.

If you are what you eat, you become what you speak.
If you free your tongue, your spirit will follow.
Just keep saying it, Girl, you’ll get whole.
Say it again and again, Girl, you’ll get free.

If you are what you eat,

you become what you speak.
Free your tongue and your spirit will follow.
Free your spirit, no telling what could happen.
Across the Kitchen Table
A Sister-to-Sister Dialogue

Barbara Smith and Beverly Smith

In June 1980, we sent Beverly and Barbara a number of questions

regarding their experiences as Black feminists in the women’s movement.
The following is a transcript of their responses.
—The Editors

Feminism: More than a “Click” and a Clique

The Editors: What do you see as the effects of the pervasiveness of white
middle-class women in the feminist movement? In your experience how do
class and race issues intersect in the movement?
Beverly: … on Saturday night, what happened is that she was flossing her
teeth after the meal. I was just so impressed with the fact that she would
take such good care of her teeth. And so she said that the reason was that
when she was a child her mother had saved up money for her to go and visit
her grandmother or something down South. And she had been looking
forward to it all year. I think that she usually went. But what happened is
that this particular year she went to the dentist right before, and she had 7
cavities. And that wiped out her vacation. Because it was a matter of
either/or. But of course, that’s not the poorest you can get either. “My God,”
I said, “I bet there’s hardly a white woman that we come into contact with
that would have any perception of what that meant.” And yet it sounded so
familiar to me.
Barbara: Exactly. What we want to describe in this dialogue are the class
differences we experience on this kind of basic level which “high-level”
analysis and rhetoric don’t get to.
 An example I can think of and which drives me crazy is the arrogance
some white women display about “choosing” not to finish school, you
know, “downward mobility.” But the thing is they don’t have to worry
about being asked “Do you have a degree,” and then being completely cut
out of a whole range of jobs and opportunity if they don’t. Race is a concept
of having to be twice as qualified, twice as good to go half as far. And I feel
like at this point, in these economic times, it’s like being three times as
good to go half as far. No way in hell would I give up getting a degree or
some piece of paper that would give me more economic leverage in this
“boys’ system.” That’s not necessarily a perception that white women have.
In fact, I know a lot of white women who never finished college, yet are
functioning in ways that if they had been Black women would be
completely unavailable to them.
This ties in with another thing we had talked about in the past, which is
the difference between women’s politics, who come to a realization that
oppression exists say at 22, 25 or even 18, versus Black women’s and other
women of color’s perspective, which is that your oppression is a lifelong
thing. There is a political savviness, I don’t know what words to use,
canniness—some difference in attitude I think between Black and white
feminists. I think what it is, is like the surprise factor. There is virtually no
Black person in this country who is surprised about oppression. Virtually
not one. Because the thing is we have had it meted out to us from infancy
on. And I think that when we are dealing with white women in coalitions,
or whatever, that often we’re at very different places about how you deal
with a problem, how you think about a problem, how you react to a
problem. Because they are coming from a perspective like, “Oh! I didn’t
know. I didn’t know. I never knew until … I never knew until …” There is a
difference when you come into your politics because you’re Black and
oppressed on that level.
Bev: What I would really want to talk about is why the women’s movement
is basically a middle-class movement. What does it mean? At least middle
class in tone. I am not saying everyone in the women’s movement is middle
class but the thing is that I think that it is middle-class women who
dominate in terms of numbers and in terms of what actually gets done, and
just how things get done. What gets made the priorities and what have you.
What really are the similarities and differences between women’s
oppression and class and racial oppression? My perception about racial
oppression and class oppression is that it’s something that starts from Day
One.
Bar: You’re born into it and it’s grinding.
Bev: It’s grinding. And it continues. My sense about the oppression of
women is that it’s something that people come to oftentimes, but not
always, in a more intellectual manner. It’s something that’s pointed out to
them. It’s something that they read about and say, “Oh, yeah!” I mean even
the concept of the “click,” you know, that you can read about in Ms.
magazine.
Bar: They still have “clicks”!
Bev: Right. They still talk about when you have an experience that makes
you realize your oppression as a woman, makes you realize other women’s
oppression, you know, some revealing incident in your life as a woman.
That is a “click.” Well I mean, I guess there are “clicks” among racial lines,
but the thing is they’re so far back in terms of class that they’re almost
imperceptible. It just feels to me like it’s a different kind of thing.
Bar: Another thing when you talk about experiencing racial oppression and
class oppression (if indeed you are a recipient of those oppressions) from
the very beginning, what is happening to you is from moderately bad to
horrible. In other words, being Black in this country there is very little
about it that is mild. The oppression is extreme. Probably the only Black
people where oppression is somewhat mitigated are those who have class
privileges and that is certainly not the majority of Black people here.
Likewise if you are a recipient of class oppression, that means that you are
poor, you are working class and therefore day to day survival is almost the
only thing you can focus on. The thing that’s different about women’s
oppression is that you can be white and middle class and female and live a
so-called “nice” life up until a certain point, then you begin to notice these
“clicks,” but I think the quality of life for the upper- or middle-class white
woman is so far ahead of the quality of life for the Black person, the Black
child, the working-class child or the poor child.
Bev: I want to attempt to make comparison between different types of
oppression. When I think of poverty, I think of constant physical and
material oppression. You know, you aren’t poor one day and well-to-do the
next. If you’re poor it’s a constant thing, every day, every day. In some
ways it’s almost more constant than race because, say you’re middle class
and you’re a Black person who is of course subject to racism, you don’t
necessarily experience it every single day in the same intensity, or to the
same degree. Whereas poverty is just something you experience constantly.
So what I was trying to come up with is—Is there any oppression that
women experience that is that total, in other words literally affects their
physical well-being on a day to day basis?
Bar: Can I make a joke, Bev?
Bev: What?
Bar: Heterosexuality. (Laughing) Well, moving right along …
Bev: Yes, they are suffering … Well, battering is maybe something, but not
necessarily, only in some extreme incidences.
Bar: Well, I think in a way we’re almost comparing apples and pears. We
don’t have a language yet or a framework as to what is the true nature of
women’s oppression, given where it takes place and who it comes from and
how. Maybe the battered woman is not beaten every day, but she has to wait
on her husband every day and her children. She’s either bored out of her
mind or worrying and scraping, trying to make ends meet, both in the
context of the nuclear family. Women’s oppression is so organic or circular
or something. One place on the circle is battering, one place is cat calls,
another is rape, another place is the fact that no one takes you seriously
even while you worked to put your husband through college. There’s a
whole range of stuff, that’s why it’s so hard to pin something down.
Bev: I think for purposes of analysis what we try to do is to break things
down and try to separate and compare but in reality, the way women live
their lives, those separations just don’t work. Women don’t live their lives
like, “Well this part is race, and this is class, and this part has to do with
women’s identities,” so it’s confusing.
Bar: And Black women and women of color in particular don’t do that. I
think maybe what we have defined as an important component of Black
feminism is that maybe, for the short run at least, that’s all right. We don’t
have to rank or separate out. What we have to do is define the nature of the
whole, of all the systems impinging on us.
Bev: Given these differences between us, that women are of different races
and classes, how can a white middle-class movement actually deal with all
women’s oppression, as it purports to do, particularly if most women are
not present to represent their own interests? I think this is one of the most
essential questions the movement has to face.
Bar: What we’ve got to look at is what is the nature of those issues that get
multi-oppressed women involved in movement work. What are those issues
and how might those issues be incorporated into the women’s movements? I
am thinking here of all the Black women who were involved in the Civil
Rights movement. Fannie Lou Hamer is a name we know, but there were
countless thousands of other women whose names we don’t know whose
material conditions would not indicate that they would have the
wherewithal to struggle politically but then they did. Even more recently,
poor women have been involved in issues like tenants rights or welfare
organizing, etc.
Bev: Sometimes I think maybe twenty-five to fifty years from now we
might really understand what the origins of the women’s movement were,
much more than we know today. We may lose some of the proximity, but
we’ll gain some of the hindsight and the perspective. One of the things we
might discover is that the origins of the feminist movement were basically
middle class, but there are reasons for that. Already there is analysis about
that from people who are somewhat anti-feminist; Marxists and leftists that
have the perception that the women’s movement is just an indication that
we’re in an advanced stage of capitalism. They say that the fact that the
women’s movement developed in this country at the time it did had to do
with how capitalism had developed, in other words, a high enough rate of
profit or surplus. I don’t know what the terminology is, exactly, but this
material surplus made it possible for women to have the “leisure” to
demand certain rights.
So, as I see it, in the same way that the welfare rights movement
comes out of the needs expressed and experienced by the women receiving
welfare, there is a path that the women’s movement has followed that
originated out of their own middle-class needs.
Bar: Yes, I think that is quite verifiable … There is just so much class
conflict in this society that it is hard for people who are economically
and/or racially oppressed to believe that there are some people who may
experience their oppression differently. I think that this is where the
laughability of the women’s movement comes in. The woman I teach a
class with told me how she has a friend who was teaching John Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath, to a class who had a decent number of Black students
in it and the Black students refused to believe that it was about white
people. Refused to believe, you know? John Steinbeck, Great White
Novelist! That’s just incredible! What it shows is the class conflict, the class
division, that is totally enforced in this society to keep people unaware of
each other’s situations, commonalities, etc.

The Whitewash of Cultural Identity

Eds: By virtue of your education, what class assumptions are made about
you by white feminists? How do you experience white women trying to
“whitewash” you?
Bar: This is very complicated. There is a sociologist, a Black woman who’s
here in Boston, she said something very astute about this whole issue of
class. She was talking about how sociologists often confuse class with
lifestyle. They will throw out all their knowledge about income level, and
assume people are of a different class. So they’ll see a Black family who
makes $6,000 a year, but the thing is they have books and they are stable
and blah blah blah and all this crap, you know, they’re trying to send their
kids to college and they do and the sociologists say, “Well, then, they must
be middle class.” As she said so succinctly, “$6,000 dollars worth of money
buys $6,000 worth of goods.” (That would make them poor today. Twenty
years ago, working class). It just depends on what you decide to spend it on.
There is a difference between economic class and the narrow set of values
usually associated with it, you know? Because I think we come from that
kind of home …
Bev: Sure. Sure.
Bar: Where there were priorities put on things that poor working-class
Black people weren’t supposed to be thinking about.
Bev: Yeah, it’s very confusing. The fact that education was something that
was always valued in our family, not just in our generation, but for
generations back. I think that’s where a lot of white feminists get confused
about us. Because of the fact of the education we had and the emphasis on
cultural development and on intellectual development that has been in our
family at least for three generations, makes people think, well, we must
have come from a middle-class background.
Bar: Oh yeah! Sure!
Bev: It’s true, we never starved. But I just get so frustrated because I feel
people don’t understand where we came from. When I look at the
photographs in our scrapbook I just think if they looked at the house, would
they understand what our class background actually was? Because of where
we were living, the size of the rooms …
Bar: The fact that there was no automatic washing machine.
Bev: The fact that when you got a chest of drawers, a dresser, and a bed in
one of the bedrooms, literally there was no floor space. I think that a lot of
where we came from had to do with, as you said, values and managing. One
of the values is that you handled money in such a way that you made it
stretch as far as you possibly could.
Bar: Don’t I remember! (Laughing) It was a real value that you live as
decently as possible on the money you do make.
Bev: Exactly.
Bar: There was a lot of emphasis on trying.
Bev: Sometimes I do wish people could just see us in the context we grew
up in, who our people are.
Bar: In order for people to understand what our background was, in order
to place us, they need to have a lot of comprehension about what Black life
is all about in this country, period. There is a cookbook, called Spoonbread
and Strawberry Wine by these two Darden sisters. The reason why I
mention it is because they have family history in there. This was a
successful Black family, and yet these people worked like hell! They were
people who were ex-slaves. Almost anybody in their family who wanted to
go to a Black college could have, but that’s not nearly the same thing as a
family who sent all of their sons to Harvard, all of their daughters to Smith,
or whatever. There’s just a different social context. Even though this is a
successful Black family, there is poverty, struggle, oppression, violence in
the history of that family that is totally unrecognizable to outsiders …
Bev: Just like within ours. You know one of the things that I’ve felt for a
long time being involved in the women’s movement, is that there is so
much about Black identity that doesn’t get called into practice.
Bar: Indeed! Indeed!
Bev: And that’s very upsetting to me. It really makes me think about the
choices I have made, either implicitly and less consciously or very
consciously. It makes me think about how I live my life because there are so
many parts of our Black identity that we no longer get a chance to exercise.
And that’s just something that is very appalling to me.
Bar: It’s just too true. It’s too true. Too appalling!
 I would just like to mention July 4th which happened a few days ago
and watching the Black family who lives in the house behind mine as I have
for the last four years and just having this feeling of longing like, you know,
I’ll never be in that situation. A few days later, I was talking to this white
woman I know about that and she said, “Well do you really want to be
sitting out there with those men?” and I said, “No.” But the thing is that it’s
the whole thing. The whole damn thing! I realized, too, it was my regret for
the past, for those July 4ths that were essentially just like the one I was
watching right outside my window and for the fact that it will never be that
way again. Well …
I don’t think we can ever give it to each other as peers because there is
a kind of family bonding across generations that is very Black that doesn’t
happen.1
Bev: One of the things I was getting at is that there are ways we act when
Black people are together that white women will never see in a largely
white context. So I think that’s one of the reasons that again, to use to
phrase that was asked to us, they are able to “whitewash” us. Now, I don’t
think this is about acting white in a white context. It’s about one, a lack of
inspiration. Because the way you act with Black people is because they
inspire the behavior. And I do mean inspire. And the other thing is that
when you are in a white context, you think, “Well why bother? Why waste
your time?” If what you’re trying to do is get things across and
communicate and what-have-you, you talk in your second language.
Bar: This is so different from being in a Black context. For example, it just
occurred to me this experience I had visiting an old friend of mine that I
have known for a number of years. She was staying in this house with this
regular old Black nuclear family. And the woman of the house was clearly
the person who kept the whole thing together. They had food laid back!
(Laughing) And the thing is it was really a lot of fun for me to see that,
“pervert” that I am—that’s in quotes—dyke that I am, I could sit down at a
table with these middle-aged Black women who were playing pokeeno and
be able to hang, you know? And it was very nice. I had a good time.
Bev: Only one question, Barbara, did you play? (Laughing)
Bar: Yeah, I played for a little while. Throughout the day, there must’ve
been twenty people in and out of the house. And it was no particular
occasion, just twenty people in and out of the house. At one point, we were
talking about television and the woman said, “Oh Barbara doesn’t watch
TV. She’s an intellectual.” It was a joke and I felt good enough in that
context with people I hardly knew to understand that they said that with a
great deal of affection. I realized they were complimenting me and being
supportive for something I had accomplished. I’m sure they felt proud of
the fact that Alice, the doctor, and Barbara, who teaches at U Mass, were
sitting around on a Sunday evening. And the thing is that it was not the kind
of hostility that I have sometimes experienced from my so-called peers of
Black women about those very same struggles and accomplishments. And it
certainly is not the misunderstanding that I have gotten from white women
about the meaning of that. Because of course, these people are trying to
send their children to school too.
Bev: I wonder is this the trade-off? Is this what everyone who has our
identity has to sacrifice? One of my constant questions is how do other
lesbians of color live their lives? The other question I have is—“Is this ‘fly
in the buttermilk’ existence a function of our feminism more than our
lesbianism?” To ask the question more explicitly—Do black lesbians, who
do not identify as feminists and base their lives in the Black community,
feel this struggle? I think the answer is that they don’t all the time. It’s hard
to figure out.
Bar: I think the isolation is probably a result much more of being a
feminist. I think this has some class factors in it. This almost takes us back
to where we began because in order to be involved in this women’s
movement, as it stands today, you have to be able to deal with “middle-
classness.” And the Black women who can take it are often the ones with
educational privilege.

Lesbian Separatism

Eds.: Is a lesbian separatist position inherently racist? Is this position a

viable political position to take?
Bar: As we said in our collective statement (Combahee) I think we have
real questions because separatism seems like such a narrow kind of politics
and also because it seems to be only viably practiced by women who have
certain kinds of privilege: white-skinned privilege, class privilege. Women
who don’t have those kinds of privilege have to deal with this society and
with the institutions of this society. They can’t go to a harbor of many acres
of land, and farm, and “invite the goddess.” Women of color are very aware
that racism is not gender specific and that it affects all people of color. We
have experiences that have nothing to do with being female, but are
nonetheless experiences of deep oppression … and even violence.
Bev: Maybe the reason that white women got into lesbian separatism was
because in being separatist they were separating themselves from white
men, given how there is so much oppression in this world currently that
white men have visited on people. In some ways they felt that they had to
separate themselves from white men to even have a fighting chance.
Bar: So seldom is separatism involved in making real political change,
affecting the institutions in the society in any direct way. If you define
certain movement issues as straight women’s issues, for example
reproductive rights and sterilization abuse, then these identifiable
sexual/political issues are ones you are not going to bother with as a
separatist.
We have noticed how separatists in our area, instead of doing political
organizing often do zap acts. For example they might come to a meeting or
series of meetings then move on their way. It is not clear what they’re
actually trying to change. We sometimes think of separatism as politics
without a practice.
Bev: One of the problems of separatism is that I can’t see it as a philosophy
that explains and analyzes the roots of all oppression and is going to go
towards solving it. I think it has some validity in a more limited sphere. To
begin to talk about being separate from men is viable. It has some
worthwhile aspects.
Bar: Many lesbians are separatist in that sense. You are very aware of the
choice—that in being a lesbian you understand that you really don’t need
men to define your identity, your sexuality, to make your life meaningful or
simply to have a good time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have no
comprehension of the oppressions that you share with men. And, you see,
white women with class privilege don’t share oppression with white men.
They’re in a critical and antagonistic position whereas Black women and
other women of color definitely share oppressed situations with men of
their race.
What white lesbians have against lesbians of color is that they accuse
us of being “male identified” because we are concerned with issues that
affect our whole race. They express anger at us for not “seeing the light.”
That is another aspect of how they carry on their racism. They are so
narrow and adamant about that that they dismiss lesbians of color and
women of color who aren’t lesbians because we have some concern about
what happens to the men of our race.2 And it’s not like we like their sexism
or even want to sleep with them. You can certainly be concerned, as we are
living here this summer in Boston, when one Black man after another ends
up dead.
Bev: It’s not only being concerned, it is observing what happens—who does
racist acts and who are the targets for racism. It would be incredibly
dishonest to say that racism is a thing just experienced by Black women.
Bar: And also politically inexpedient. I think that people who define
themselves as Black feminists certainly have decided that the bulk of their
political work is in concert with other Black women. That doesn’t mean that
you’re totally oblivious to the reality of racism. I feel that the one thing
about racism is that it doesn’t play favorites. Look at the history of lynching
in this country. And also look at how Black women have experienced
violence that is definitely racial. When you read about Black women being
lynched, they aren’t thinking of us as females. The horrors that we have
experienced have absolutely everything to do with them not even viewing us
as women.
Because if we are women some false chivalry might enter in and
maybe certain things wouldn’t happen. I’ve never read an account of a
lynching of a white woman, or one who was pregnant. I think there’s a
difference between the rape-murder that happens to all women and the
lynching that happens specifically to Black women. A contemporary
example of that is how Black women who are battered and who physically
defend themselves are treated differently than white women by the courts.
It’s seen differently by the courts when a white middle-class woman
murders her husband. Then it’s so-called self-defense. I was just reading a
case involving a Black woman in Michigan where the Black woman was
sold down the river obviously because she was Black. A negative image of
Black men and women got her fate delivered.
Bev: One of the most dangerous and erroneous concepts that separatists
have put forward is that other oppressions, in addition to sexism, are
attributed to men only. Some separatists believe that although women are
racist, when men disappear and no longer rule, racism will not be a
problem. It’s very analogous to people who are Marxists who say, “Well,
when class oppression and racism end, definitely the oppression of women
and lesbians will end.” What lesbian separatists are saying is that when we
get rid of men, sexism and racism will end, too. I think that this is one of
the most racist aspects of [their ideology] because it does not recognize the
racism that women, including lesbians, have.
There is also a dishonesty that I have come across in some lesbians
who although they do not regard themselves as separatists, they also do not
acknowledge the separatism in their own lifestyles. Many lesbians who
don’t consider themselves separatists would never live with a man and
would not go very far to befriend a man (although they may have a few
token men in their lives), but they don’t go any further than to disavow their
separatism.
Bar: I disagree with that. The so-called disavowal is, from my perspective,
the lack of need to deify or glorify those very kinds of choices. Separatists
get angry at the fact that I don’t make much of the fact that I don’t see a
man socially from one end of the week to the other. I feel they are trying to
collapse political positions that I do not consider in any way trivial. Who
you have parties with, as far as I am concerned, is not the bottom line of
defining your political commitment.
I also want to say that I don’t think that white lesbian separatists are
more racist than any other white women in the women’s movement. I just
think it takes different forms. White lesbian separatism has almost a studied
obliviousness to instances of oppression whereas another group of
feminists, for example socialists, are even sectarian [about race]. The way
their racism would manifest itself is: they would know that racism was an
important issue, but they wouldn’t be dealing with it in any way except as a
theoretical radical issue. Their discomfort in dealing around women of color
would be just as palpable; that attitude would be just as apparent. All white
people in this country are victims of the disease of racism.
There is no such thing as a non-racist. Sometimes it’s as simple as who
you can laugh with, who you can cry with and who you can share meals
with and whose face you can touch. There are bunches of white women for
whom these things that I’ve mentioned are unknown experiences with
women of color.
Bar: (Aside) Beverly is fixing this little teddybear. She’s been doing surgery
on it for the last couple of hours. The bear shows remarkable stamina, like
no human being. You could say that we are having a series of operations in
our lives.
Bev: If it weren’t for Barbara and her relationship with this person who is
not myself, I wouldn’t be dealing with it. (Laughing)
Bar: I don’t see that as being relevant to this conversation.
Bev: It is relevant. I’m talking about how I got involved in this surgery.

Homophobia in the Black Community

Eds.: Describe your experience in dealing with homophobic Black sisters.

Bar: There’s nothing to compare with how you feel when you’re cut cold
by your own … I think the reason that Black women are so homophobic is
that attraction-repulsion thing. They have to speak out vociferously against
lesbianism because if they don’t they may have to deal with their own deep
feelings for women. They make great cases for how fucked up it all is, and
therefore cover their asses admirably. Is homophobia more entrenched in
the Black community than in the white community?
Bev: You can argue about that until Jesus comes, really.
Bar: I really must say, historically and politically, there are more reasons
for the Black community to be homophobic; one of them being that the
women’s movement and gay rights have made fewer inroads into the Black
community. We can assume that a community that has been subjected to the
ideas of the movement is going to have more consciousness. And given
how up until the last couple of years the feminist movement has not touched
Third World communities, we can expect their attitudes to be much as they
have been in the past.
One of the reasons for homophobic attitudes among Black women may
be the whole sexual stereotyping used against all Black people anyway, but
especially women in relation to homosexuality. You know, the “Black
bulldagger” image. Lesbianism is definitely about something sexual, a so-
called deviant sexuality. So the way most Black women deal with it is to be
just as rigid and closed about it as possible. White people don’t have a
sexual image that another oppressor community has put on them.
Bev: This country is so racist that it is possible to take many, many things
and concepts that have nothing to do with race and talk about them in racial
terms. Because people are so dichotomized into either black or white, it
defines a continuum. This is so strict and so overwhelming in this country,
you can take things that have nothing to do with race and refer to them
racially. Therefore, Black people have the option of taking things—
sexuality behavior, conflicts, whatever they don’t like—and saying, “That’s
white.” Lesbianism is not the only thing seen as a white thing. A real good
example is suicide. Black people say, “Yeah, suicide is a white thing.”
Bar: Oh yeah, we used to believe that. And of course one felt all the worse
for having considered it. I’m thinking of Ntozake Shange’s play for colored
girls who have considered suicide.3 It’s very brave. I mean, she’s dealing
with a lot of myths, by saying that we have even considered it, if it’s
supposed to be a white thing.
Bev: Any behavior Black people say is despicable, they can disregard by
saying this doesn’t belong to the Black community. There’s hardly a thing
in this world in our experience that is not referred to being either Black or
white, from animals on—people talking about “white dogs.” They weren’t
talking about dogs that were white in color, they were talking about dogs
that belonged to white people.
Bar: So often lesbianism and male homosexuality are talked about as a
white disease within the Black community. It is just so negating of our
lives. Very upsetting.

Eds.: Are Black women more vulnerable to homophobic attack?

Bar: Yes, Black women are more vulnerable to homophobic attack because
we don’t have white skin privilege, or class privilege to fall back on if
somebody wants to start a smear campaign against us. As I said in my
essay, “Towards a Black Feminist Criticism,”4 heterosexual privilege is
always the last to go. [Black lesbians] don’t have any of the other
privileges; it really is jumping off the edge in a very fundamental way.
Somebody who is already dealing with multiple oppressions is more
vulnerable to another kind of attack upon her identity.
Bev: I also feel that Black women are more vulnerable to physical attack as
lesbians because they’re Black. The stories you hear over the years of Black
lesbians being attacked for being lesbian, usually by white men!

Eds.: What is the relationship between Black women’s view of lesbianism

and their resistance to identifying as feminists?
Bar: It’s real connected. Feminists have been portrayed as nothing but
“lesbians” to the Black community as well. There was a considerable effort
in the early seventies to turn the Black community off to feminism. You can
look at publications, particularly Black publications making
pronouncements about what the feminist movement was and who it reached
that would trivialize it, that would say no Black women were involved, that
did everything possible to prevent those coalitions between Black and white
women from happening because there was a great deal of fear. Black men
did not want to lose Black women as allies. And the white power structure
did not want to see all women bond across racial lines because they knew
that would be an unbeatable unstoppable combination. They did a very
good job. You can just document those happenings during that period.
So, yes, most Black women think that to be a feminist you have to be a
lesbian. And if not that, then at least you have to deal with being around
lesbians. And you see, that is true. It’s very hard to be in the women’s
movement and not be around lesbians. And if you’re so homophobic that
you can’t deal with the thought of lesbianism then you probably won’t be
involved. I think these things are changing. More and more Black women
are becoming sensitive or sympathetic to the women’s movement.

Third World Women: Tokenism or Leadership

Eds.: How, as women of color, can we prevent ourselves from being

tokenized by white feminists? How do you see Third World women forming
the leadership in the feminist movement?
Bev: One looks at the question about tokenism and just throws up her
hands. There are so many possibilities of tokenization. One of the most
tokenized situations that Barbara and I find ourselves in is when we are
asked to speak at a certain place. You can be certain to be the only Black
person there. You’re going to be put in the position of speaking for the race,
for all Black feminists. One of the things that helps is to get paid and to put
it on that level so you don’t feel so exploited.
Bar: I think that the service Gloria thought of having and calling it “Dial a
Token”—I mean that’s a good thing (laughs). For one thing it puts it out
there. It’s saying, “Hey, I know what you’re doing and I want to get paid for
it.” Another thing, try not to be the only Third World person there. I was
thinking of the meeting that Cherríe went to when she was here with us [ref.
xlvi]. And even though there were several Third World women present, we
were still tokenized. I guess that I am really talking about support as
opposed to defusing tokenization.
Bev: Given the state of things between Black and white women, we’re
going to be tokenized quite a bit. It’s so hard to get around that.
Bar: But, a solution to tokenism is not racial separatism. There are
definitely separatist aspects emerging among Black and Third World
feminist communities and that is fine. But, ultimately, any kind of
separatism is a dead end. It’s good for forging identity and gathering
strength, but I do feel that the strongest politics are coalition politics that
cover a broad base of issues. There is no way that one oppressed group is
going to topple a system by itself. Forming principled coalitions around
specific issues is very important. You don’t necessarily have to like or love
the people you’re in coalition with.
This brings me back to the issue of lesbian separatism. I read in a
women’s newspaper an article by a woman speaking on behalf of lesbian
separatists. She claimed that separatists are more radical than other
feminists. 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. And it really pisses me off
that they think of themselves as radical. I think there is a difference between
being extreme and being radical.
This is why Third World women are forming the leadership in the
feminist movement because we are not one-dimensional, one-issued in our
political understanding. Just by virtue of our identities we certainly define
race and usually define class as being fundamental issues that we have to
address. The more wide-ranged your politics, the more potentially profound
and transformative they are.
Bev: The way I see it, the function that Third World women play in the
movement is that we’re the people who throw the ball a certain distance and
then the white women run to that point to pick it up. I feel we are constantly
challenging white women, usually on the issues of racism but not always.
We are always challenging women to go further, to be more realistic. I so
often think of the speech that Sojourner Truth made not because of the
contents so much but more because of the function. She says, “Now
children, let’s get this together. Let me explain what’s going on here. Let me
lay it out for you.” I must admit that the reason I think of it so often is that I
have thought of myself in that situation. “Let me explain this to you one
more time, let me take you by the hand, etc.” I find myself playing that role.
But there’s a way though that I feel that Third World women are not in
actual leadership positions in the women’s movement in terms of policy
making, etc. But we certainly have the vision.
We are in the position to challenge the feminist movement as it stands
to date and, not out of any theoretical commitment. Our analysis of race and
class oppression and our commitment to really dealing with those issues,
including homophobia, is something we know we have to struggle with to
insure our survival. It is organic to our very existence.
Bar: Thank you, sweetheart. Teddybear just gave me a kiss. (To the editors)
Bye Girls.

Notes
1. The twin sisters, Barbara and Beverly, were raised in a household headed by women in
Cleveland, Ohio. At the time of this conversation, they had already lost those women: their
mother (when they were nine years old); and, later, their aunt and maternal grandmother who
had raised them. (Editor, 2015)
2. An even more striking example of the connection between a Lesbian separatist stance and the
disavowal of racism as a central feminist concern can be seen in the incredibly negative
responses, coming primarily from separatists, to Elly Bulkin’s fine article “Racism and Writing:
Some Implications for White Lesbian Critics,” Sinister Wisdom 13 (Spring 1980).
3. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf was first published
by Shameless Hussy Press in 1976. (Editor, 2015)
4. Barbara Smith’s avant-garde essay was first published in Conditions Two, 1977. (Editor, 2015)
Lesbianism
An Act of Resistance

Cheryl Clarke

For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist,

racist, homophobic, imperialist culture, such as that of North America, is an
act of resistance. (A resistance that should be championed throughout the
world by all the forces struggling for liberation from the same slave master.)
No matter how a woman lives out her lesbianism—in the closet, in the state
legislature, in the bedroom—she has rebelled against becoming the slave
master’s concubine, viz., the male-dependent female, the female
heterosexual. This rebellion is dangerous business in patriarchy. Men at all
levels of privilege, of all classes and colors have the potential to act out
legalistically, moralistically, and violently when they cannot colonize
women, when they cannot circumscribe our sexual, productive,
reproductive, creative prerogatives and energies. And the lesbian—that
woman who, as Judy Grahn says, “has taken a woman lover”1—has
succeeded in resisting the slave master’s imperialism in that one sphere of
her life. The lesbian has decolonized her body. She has rejected a life of
servitude implicit in Western, heterosexual relationships and has accepted
the potential of mutuality in a lesbian relationship—roles notwithstanding.
Historically, this culture has come to identify lesbians as women, who
over time, engage in a range and variety of sexual-emotional relationships
with women. I, for one, identify a woman as a lesbian who says she is.
Lesbianism is a recognition, an awakening, a reawakening of our passion
for each (woman) other (woman) and for same (woman). This passion will
ultimately reverse the heterosexual imperialism of male culture. Women,
through the ages, have fought and died rather than deny that passion. In her
essay “The Meaning of Our Love for Women Is What We Have Constantly
to Expand” Adrienne Rich states:
 … Before any kind of feminist movement existed, or could exist,
lesbians existed: women who loved women, who refused to
comply with behavior demanded of women, who refused to
define themselves in relation to men. Those women, our
foresisters, millions whose names we do not know, were tortured
and burned as witches, slandered in religious and later in
“scientific” tracts, portrayed in art and literature as bizarre,
amoral, destructive, decadent women. For a long time, the lesbian
has been a personification of feminine evil.
… Lesbians have been forced to live between two cultures,
both male-dominated, each of which has denied and endangered
our existence. … Heterosexual, patriarchal culture has driven
lesbians into secrecy and guilt, often to self-hatred and suicide.2

The evolving synthesis of lesbianism and feminism—two women-

centered and powered ideologies—is breaking that silence and secrecy. The
following analysis is offered as one small cut against that stone of silence
and secrecy. It is not intended to be original or all-inclusive. I dedicate this
work to all the women hidden from history whose suffering and triumph
have made it possible for me to call my name out loud.3
The woman who embraces lesbianism as an ideological, political, and
philosophical means of liberation of all women from heterosexual tyranny
must also identify with the world-wide struggle of all women to end male-
supremacist tyranny at all levels. As far as I am concerned, any woman who
calls herself a feminist must commit herself to the liberation of all women
from coerced heterosexuality as it manifests itself in the family, the state,
and on Madison Avenue. The lesbian-feminist struggles for the liberation of
all people from patriarchal domination through heterosexism and for the
transformation of all socio-political structures, systems, and relationships
that have been degraded and corrupted under centuries of male domination.
However, there is no one kind of lesbian, no one kind of lesbian
behavior, and no one kind of lesbian relationship. Also there is no one kind
of response to the pressures that lesbians labor under to survive as lesbians.
Not all women who are involved in sexual-emotional relationships with
women call themselves lesbians or identify with any particular lesbian
community. Many women are only lesbians to a particular community and
pass as heterosexuals as they traffic among enemies. (This is analogous to
being black and passing for white with only one’s immediate family
knowing one’s true origins.) Yet, those who hide in the closet of
heterosexual presumption are sooner or later discovered. The “nigger in-
the-woodpile” story retells itself. Many women are politically active as
lesbians, but may fear holding hands with their lovers as they traverse
heterosexual turf. (This response to heterosexual predominance can be
likened to the reaction of the black student who integrates a predominantly
white dormitory and who fears leaving the door of her room open when she
plays gospel music.) There is the woman who engages in sexual-emotional
relationships with women and labels herself bisexual. (This is comparable
to the Afro-American whose skin-color indicates her mixed ancestry yet
who calls herself “mulatto” rather than black.) Bisexual is a safer label than
lesbian, for it posits the possibility of a relationship with a man, regardless
of how infrequent or non-existent the female bisexual’s relationships with
men might be. And then there is the lesbian who is a lesbian anywhere and
everywhere and who is in direct and constant confrontation with
heterosexual presumption, privilege, and oppression. (Her struggle can be
compared to that of the Civil Rights activist of the 1960s who was out there
on the streets for freedom, while so many of us viewed the action on the
television.)
Wherever we, as lesbians, fall along this very generalized political
continuum, we must know that the institution of heterosexuality is a die-
hard custom through which male-supremacist institutions insure their own
perpetuity and control over us. Women are kept, maintained, and contained
through terror, violence, and spray of semen. It is as profitable for our
colonizers to confine our bodies and alienate us from our own life processes
as it was profitable for the European to enslave the African and destroy all
memory of a prior freedom and self-determination—Alex Haley
notwithstanding. And just as the foundation of Western capitalism depended
upon the North Atlantic slave trade, the system of patriarchal domination is
buttressed by the subjugation of women through heterosexuality. So,
patriarchs must extol the boy-girl dyad as “natural” to keep us straight and
compliant in the same way the European had to extol Caucasian superiority
to justify the African slave trade. Against that historic backdrop, the woman
who chooses to be a lesbian lives dangerously.
As a member of the largest and second most oppressed group of people
of color, as a woman whose slave and ex-slave foresisters suffered some of
the most brutal racist, male-supremacist imperialism in Western history, the
black lesbian has had to survive also the psychic mutilation of heterosexual
superiority. The black lesbian is coerced into the experience of institutional
racism—like every other nigger in America—and must suffer as well the
homophobic sexism of the black political community, some of whom seem
to have forgotten so soon the pain of rejection, denial, and repression
sanctioned by racist America. While most political black lesbians do not
give a damn if white America is negrophobic, it becomes deeply
problematic when the contemporary black political community (another
male-dominated and male identified institution) rejects us because of our
commitment to women and women’s liberation. Many black male members
of that community seem still not to understand the historic connection
between the oppression of African peoples in North America and the
universal oppression of women. As the women’s rights activist and
abolitionist Elizabeth Cady Stanton pointed out during the 1850’s, racism
and sexism have been produced by the same animal, viz., “the white Saxon
man.”
Gender oppression (i.e., the male exploitation and control of women’s
productive and reproductive energies on the specious basis of a biological
difference) originated from the first division of labor, viz., that between
women and men, and resulted in the accumulation of private property,
patriarchal usurpation of “mother right” or matrilineage, and the
duplicitous, male-supremacist institution of heterosexual monogamy (for
women only). Sexual politics, therefore, mirror the exploitative, class-
bound relationship between the white slave master and the African slave—
and the impact of both relationships (between black and white and woman
and man) has been residual beyond emancipation and suffrage. The ruling-
class white man had a centuries-old model for his day-to-day treatment of
the African slave. Before he learned to justify the African’s continued
enslavement and the ex-slave’s continued disenfranchisement with
arguments of the African’s divinely ordained mental and moral inferiority to
himself (a smokescreen for his capitalist greed) the white man learned,
within the structure of heterosexual monogamy and under the system of
patriarchy, to relate to black people—slave or free—as a man relates to a
woman, viz., as property, as a sexual commodity, as a servant, as a source of
free or cheap labor, and as an innately inferior being.
 Although counterrevolutionary, Western heterosexuality, which
advances male supremacy, continues to be upheld by many black people,
especially black men, as the most desired state of affairs between men and
women. This observation is borne out on the pages of our most scholarly
black publications to our most commercial black publications, which view
the issue of black male and female relationships through the lens of
heterosexual bias. But this is to be expected, as historically heterosexuality
was one of our only means of power over our condition as slaves and one of
two means we had at our disposal to appease the white man.
Now, as ex-slaves, black men have more latitude to oppress black
women, because the brothers no longer have to compete directly with the
white man for control of black women’s bodies. Now, the black man can
assume the “master” role, and he can attempt to tyrannize black women.
The black man may view the lesbian—who cannot be manipulated or
seduced sexually by him—in much the same way the white slave master
once viewed the black male slave, viz., as some perverse caricature of
manhood threatening his position of dominance over the female body. This
view, of course, is a “neurotic illusion” imposed on black men by the
dictates of male supremacy, which the black man can never fulfill because
he lacks the capital means and racial privilege.

Historically, the myth in the Black world is that there are only two
free people in the United States, the white man and the black
woman. The myth was established by the Black man in the long
period of his frustration when he longed to be free to have the
material and social advantages of his oppressor, the white man.
On examination of the myth, this so called freedom was based on
the sexual prerogatives taken by the white man on the Black
female. It was fantasied by the Black man that she enjoyed it.4

While lesbian-feminism does threaten the black man’s predatory

control of black women, its goal as a political ideology and philosophy is
not to take the black man’s or any man’s position on top.
Black lesbians who do work within “by-for-about-black-people”
groups or organizations either pass as “straight” or relegate our lesbianism
to the so-called “private” sphere. The more male-dominated or black
nationalist bourgeois the organization or group, the more resistant to
change, and thus, the more homophobic and anti-feminist. In these sectors,
we learn to keep a low profile.
In 1979, at the annual conference of a regional chapter of the National
Black Social Workers, the national director of that body was given a
standing ovation for the following remarks:

Homosexuals are even accorded minority status now. … And

white women, too. And some of you black women who call
yourselves feminists will be sitting up in meetings with the same
white women who will be stealing your men on the sly.

This type of indictment of women’s revolution and implicitly of

lesbian liberation is voiced throughout the bourgeois black (male)
movement. But this is the insidious nature of male supremacy. While the
black man may consider racism his primary oppression, he is hard-put to
recognize that sexism is inextricably bound up with the racism the black
woman must suffer, nor can he see that no women (or men for that matter)
will be liberated from the original “master-slave” relationship, viz., that
between men and women, until we are all liberated from the false premise
of heterosexual superiority. This corrupted, predatory relationship between
men and women is the foundation of the master-slave relationship between
white and black people in the United States.
The tactic many black men use to intimidate black women from
embracing feminism is to reduce the conflicts between white women and
black women to a “tug-o’-war” for the black penis. And since the black
lesbian, as stated previously, is not interested in his penis, she undermines
the black man’s only source of power over her, viz., his heterosexuality.
Black lesbians and all black women involved in the struggle for liberation
must resist this manipulation and seduction.
The black dyke, like every dyke in America, is everywhere—in the
home, in the street, on the welfare, unemployment and social security rolls,
raising children, working in factories, in the armed forces, on television, in
the public school system, in all the professions, going to college or graduate
school, in middle-management, among others. The black dyke, like every
other non-white and working-class and poor woman in America, has not
suffered the luxury, privilege or oppression of being dependent on men,
even though our male counterparts have been present, have shared our lives,
work and struggle, and, in addition have undermined our “human dignity”
along the way like most men in patriarchy, the imperialist family of man.
But we could never depend on them “to take care of us” on their resources
alone—and, of course, it is another “neurotic illusion” imposed on our
fathers, brothers, lovers, husbands that they are supposed to “take care of
us” because we are women. Translate: “to take care of us” equals “to
control us.” Our brothers’, fathers’, lovers’, husbands’ only power is their
manhood. And unless manhood is somehow embellished by white skin and
generations of private wealth, it has little currency in racist, capitalist
patriarchy. The black man, for example, is accorded native elite or colonial
guard or vigilante status over black women in imperialist patriarchy. He is
an overseer for the slave master. Because of his maleness he is given access
to certain privileges, e.g., employment, education, a car, life insurance, a
house, some nice vines. He is usually a rabid heterosexual. He is, since
emancipation, allowed to raise a “legitimate” family, allowed to have his
piece of turf, viz., his wife and children. That is as far as his dictatorship
extends, for if his wife decides that she wants to leave that home for
whatever reason, he does not have the power or resources to seduce her
otherwise if she is determined to throw off the benign or malicious yoke of
dependency. The ruling class white man, on the other hand, has always had
the power to count women among his pool of low-wage labor, his means of
production. Most recently, he has “allowed” women the right to sue for
divorce, to apply for AFDC, and to be neocolonialized.
Traditionally, poor black men and women who banded together and
stayed together and raised children together did not have the luxury to
cultivate dependence among the members of their families. So, the black
dyke, like most black women, has been conditioned to be self-sufficient,
i.e., not dependent on men. For me personally, the conditioning to be self-
sufficient and the predominance of female role models in my life are the
roots of my lesbianism. Before I became a lesbian, I often wondered why I
was expected to give up, avoid, and trivialize the recognition and
encouragement I felt from women in order to pursue the tenuous business
of heterosexuality. And I am not unique.
As political lesbians, i.e., lesbians who are resisting the prevailing
culture’s attempts to keep us invisible and powerless, we must become
more visible (particularly black and other lesbians of color) to our sisters
hidden in their various closets, locked in prisons of self-hate and ambiguity,
afraid to take the ancient act of woman-bonding beyond the sexual, the
private, the personal. I am not trying to reify lesbianism or feminism. I am
trying to point out that lesbian-feminism has the potential of reversing and
transforming a major component in the system of women’s oppression, viz.,
predatory heterosexuality. 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
lesbians.
The woman who takes a woman lover lives dangerously in patriarchy.
And woe betide her even more if she chooses as her lover a woman who is
not of her race. The silence among lesbian-feminists regarding the issue of
lesbian relationships between black and white women in America is caused
by none other than the centuries-old taboo and laws in the United States
against relationships between people of color and those of the Caucasian
race. Speaking heterosexually, the laws and taboos were a reflection of the
patriarchal slave master’s attempts to control his property via controlling his
lineage through the institution of monogamy (for women only) and justified
the taboos and laws with the argument that purity of the Caucasian race
must be preserved (as well as its supremacy). However, we know that his
racist and racialist laws and taboos did not apply to him in terms of the
black slave woman just as his classist laws and taboos regarding the
relationship between the ruling class and the indentured servants did not
apply to him in terms of the white woman servant he chose to rape. The
offspring of any unions between the white ruling class slave master and the
black slave woman or white woman indentured servant could not legally
inherit their white or ruling class sire’s property or name, just their mothers’
condition of servitude.
The taboo against black and white people relating at any other level
than master-slave, superior-inferior has been propounded in America to
keep black women and men and white women and men, who share a
common oppression at the hands of the ruling class white man, from
organizing against that common oppression. We, as black lesbians, must
vehemently resist being bound by the white man’s racist, sexist laws, which
have endangered potential intimacy of any kind between whites and blacks.
 It cannot be presumed that black lesbians involved in love, work, and
social relationships with white lesbians do so out of self-hate and denial of
our racial-cultural heritage, identities, and oppression. Why should a
woman’s commitment to the struggle be questioned or accepted on the basis
of her lover’s or comrade’s skin color? White lesbians engaged likewise
with black lesbians or any lesbians of color cannot be assumed to be acting
out of some perverse, guilt-ridden racialist desire.
I personally am tired of going to events, conferences, workshops,
planning sessions that involve a coming together of black and other lesbians
of color for political or even social reasons and listening to black lesbians
relegate feminism to white women, castigate black women who propose
forming coalitions with predominantly white feminist groups, minimize the
white woman’s oppression and exaggerate her power, and then finally judge
that a black lesbian’s commitment to the liberation of black women is
dubious because she does not sleep with a black woman. All of us have to
accept or reject allies on the basis of politics not on the specious basis of
skin color. Have not black people suffered betrayal from our own people?
Yes, black women’s experiences of misogyny are different from white
women’s. However, they all add up to how the patriarchal slave master
decided to oppress us. We both fought each other for his favor, approval,
and protection. Such is the effect of imperialist, heterosexist patriarchy.
Shulamith Firestone, in the essay “Racism: The Sexism of the Family of
Man,” purports this analysis of the relationship between white and black
women:

How do the women of this racial Triangle feel about each other?
Divide and conquer: Both women have grown hostile to each
other, white women feeling contempt for the “sluts” with no
morals, black women feeling envy for the pampered “powder
puffs.” The black woman is jealous of the white woman’s
legitimacy, privilege, and comfort, but she also feels deep
contempt. … Similarly the white woman’s contempt for the black
woman is mixed with envy: for the black woman’s greater sexual
license, for her gutsiness, for her freedom from the marriage bind.
For after all, the black woman is not under the thumb of a man,
but is pretty much her own boss to come and go, to leave the
house, to work (much as it is degrading work) or to be “shiftless.”
 What the white woman doesn’t know is that the black woman, not
under the thumb of one man, can now be squashed by all. There is
no alternative for either of them than the choice between being
public or private property, but because each still believes that the
other is getting away with something both can be fooled into
mischanneling their frustration onto each other rather than onto
the real enemy, “The Man.”5

Though her statement of the choices black and white women have
under patriarchy in America has merit, Firestone analyzes only a specific
relationship, i.e., between the ruling class white woman and slave or ex-
slave black woman.
Because of her whiteness, the white woman of all classes has been
accorded, as the black man has because of his maleness, certain privileges
in racist patriarchy, e.g., indentured servitude as opposed to enslavement,
exclusive right to public assistance until the 1960s, “legitimate” offspring
and (if married into the middle/upper class) the luxury to live on her
husband’s income, etc.
The black woman, having neither maleness nor whiteness, has always
had her heterosexuality, which white men and black men have manipulated
by force and at will. Further, she, like all poor people, has had her labor,
which the white capitalist man has also taken and exploited at will. These
capabilities have allowed black women minimal access to the crumbs
thrown at black men and white women. So, when the black woman and the
white woman become lovers, we bring that history and all those questions
to the relationship as well as other people’s problems with the relationships.
The taboo against intimacy between white and black people has been
internalized by us and simultaneously defied by us. If we, as lesbian-
feminists, defy the taboo, then we begin to transform the history of
relationships between black women and white women.6
In her essay “Disloyal to Civilization: Feminism, Racism,
Gynephobia,” Rich calls for feminists to attend to the complexities of the
relationship between black and white women in the United States. Rich
queries:

What caricatures of bloodless fragility and broiling sensuality still

imprint our psyches, and where did we receive these imprintings?
 What happened between the several thousand northern white
women and southern black women who together taught in the
schools founded under Reconstruction by the Freedmen’s Bureau,
side by side braving the Ku Klux Klan harrassment, terrorism,
and the hostility of white communities?7

So, all of us would do well to stop fighting each other for our space at
the bottom, because there ain’t no more room. We have spent so much time
hating ourselves. Time to love ourselves. And that, for all lesbians, as
lovers, as comrades, as freedom fighters, is the final resistance.

Notes
1. Judy Grahn, “The Common Woman,” The Work of a Common Woman (Oakland: Diana Press,
1978), 67.
2. Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978 (New York: WW
Norton, 1979), 225.
3. I would like to give particular acknowledgement to the Combahee River Collective’s “A Black
Feminist Statement.” Because this document espouses “struggling against racial, sexual,
heterosexual, and class oppression,” it has become a manifesto of radical feminist thought,
action and practice.
4. Pat Robinson et al., “Poor Black Women’s Study Papers by Poor Black Women of Mount
Vernon, New York,” in The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Cade (New York: New
American Library, 1970), 194.
5. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York:
Bantam Books, 1972), 113.
6. One such example is the Port Royal Experiment (1862), the precursor of the Freedmen’s
Bureau. Port Royal was a program of relief for “freed men and women” in the South Carolina
Sea Islands, organized under the auspices of the Boston Education Commision and the
Freedmen’s Relief Association, in New York and the Port Royal Relief Association, in
Philadelphia, and sanctioned by the Union Army and the Federal Government. See The Journal
of Charlotte Forten on the “Port Royal Experiment” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). Through
her Northern bourgeois myopia, Forten recounts her experiences as a black teacher among the
black freed men and women and her Northern white women peers.
7. Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, 298.
Lowriding through the Women’s Movement
Barbara Noda

One road winds down the mountains, past apple orchards, and into the half-
awake town of Watsonville, California. Not quite disturbed by the
university students of Santa Cruz or the tourists of Monterey, an eye-
distance from the blue roar of the Pacific, Watsonville is still a sleepy town
where lowriders drag Main in search of non-existent action. The lowriders
are left to their own destiny, to cruise against a backdrop of fog-shrouded
artichokes when the sun has gone down. Thorny spears thrust into a star-
studded night, and the lowriders bail out at deserted beaches, drink six-
packs of beer, and stare at the foam.
Sharon’s kitchen in Watsonville was the center of a different kind of
activity. We assembled in the evening: Sharon; Sharon’s zealous sister who
would soon be led to Christianity; a black lesbian who lived in a cottage
behind Sharon’s house who was an unforgivable romantic and who
probably led a past life as an opera singer; a Chicana, self-named after a
revolutionary, struggling to earn a doctorate in the University of
California’s ethereal mountaintop program called “History of
Consciousness”; and myself.
We were probably among the first of our kind back in the early
seventies: a third world women’s group. There, in the quiet of residential
Watsonville, we discussed the “colonized” and the “colonizer.” Sharon
distributed green tea, Chinese pastries, and Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on
Colonialism. As the evening wound down we stormed out together—third
world sisters—and dragged Main with the masses, drank beer and howled
at the empty, innocent face of the sky who oppressed us.
Whether Race was our answer or our question, certainly it held us
together if even for a few brief months in our lives during a time when
nothing else in the world that we saw around us had any solid identity or
meaning. It was a vaporous season, like a lost summer, and desperately we
needed to hold on to each other and croon a few songs from the underworld.
 Now, so many years later, it is still difficult to believe that Sharon is
dead. I keep thinking that one day I’ll see her in the midst of a
demonstration, shouting through a megaphone and glaring into the pale eye
who dares to tell her to “go back to where you came from.” She is not from
China. But perhaps shouting into a megaphone was not her way. I
remember the last time I saw her in newly established living quarters in the
Outer Mission. We shared a sweet piece of watermelon that floated like a
bright red iceberg in the middle of our plate, unmistakably a bite of
paradise. Old differences over “correct” politics slithered harmlessly from
our mouths with the black seeds we spit out. We talked about Asian
American poetry and Tule Lake,1 co-existed for a moment then parted
ways.
As one who was so sincerely dedicated to the “cause,” for her to be
broadsided while driving past the pine and sand that border Highway One
and killed instantly is a mystery beyond all comprehension. There is no
understanding of such things. Maybe we knew something then that we
needed to forget in order to live more meaningful lives, when we joined the
lowriders in the flagrant pursuit of their destiny.

I rode the elevator down from the 21st floor, marched to the bakery where
Sharon used to buy pastries on her visits to the city, and ate my lunch in
Portsmouth Square. I had been plugged into a dictaphone all morning and
Chinatown squirmed with life.
Pigeons softly gurgling. Game tables obscured and surrounded by the
beating hearts of groups of men. Women carrying bags of groceries nearly
flying above sedate heads, like kites trailed by small children. Old people
deciphering the ancient language of their worn out books. The red benches.
My red sweater. The color RED sang out at me, and I was a glorious part of
it.
Across the street was the leveled site of the I-Hotel.2 A fortress
barricaded with the strategy of ardent organizers, it was now a parking lot.
The damp cold of the building, the loneliness of the tenants and of us (I was
not sure whether we had been the youthful guardians of the building or
stray cats who had wandered in) had been demolished into a flattened
expanse of less than nothing. Even nothing speaks. This was merely city
grime, fumes, noise, pollution. The humanity that had kept us warm and
huddled together through makeshift Christmas dinners, internal crises and
external warfare had been strained from the air. Not even a mirage existed,
only the city life around me.

Notes
1. Tule Lake was a Japanese American internment camp during WWII, located Siskiyou County,
California. (Editor, 2015)
2. The International Hotel, the last remnant of “Manilatown” in San Francisco, was the site of a
1970s decade-long anti-eviction struggle led by young Asian American radicals, in concert with
the elder Filipino residents. (Editor, 2015)
Letter to Ma
Merle Woo

January, 1980

Dear Ma,
I was depressed over Christmas, and when New Year’s rolled around,
do you know what one of my resolves was? Not to come by and see you as
much anymore. I had to ask myself why I get so down when I’m with you,
my mother, who has focused so much of her life on me, who has endured so
much; one who I am proud of and respect so deeply for simply surviving.
I suppose that one of the main reasons is that when I leave your house,
your pretty little round white table in the dinette where we sit while you
drink tea (with only three specks of Jasmine) and I smoke and drink coffee,
I am down because I believe there are chasms between us. When you say, “I
support you, honey, in everything you do except … except …” I know you
mean except my speaking out and writing of my anger at all those things
that have caused those chasms. When you say I shouldn’t be so ashamed of
Daddy, former gambler, retired clerk of a “gook suey” store, because of the
time when I was six and saw him humiliated on Grant Avenue by two white
cops, I know you haven’t even been listening to me when I have repeatedly
said that I am not ashamed of him, not you, not who we are. When you ask,
“Are you so angry because you are unhappy?” I know that we are not
talking to each other. Not with understanding, although many words have
passed between us, many hours, many afternoons at that round table with
Daddy out in the front room watching television, and drifting out every
once in a while to say “Still talking?” and getting more peanuts that are so
bad for his health.
We talk and we talk and I feel frustrated by your censorship. I know it
is unintentional and unconscious. But whatever I have told you about the
classes I was teaching, or the stories I was working on, you’ve always
forgotten within a month. Maybe you can’t listen—because maybe when
you look in my eyes, you will, as you’ve always done, sense more than
what we’re actually saying, and that makes you fearful. Do you see your
repressed anger manifested in me? What doors would groan wide open if
you heard my words with complete understanding? Are you afraid that your
daughter is breaking out of our shackles, and into total anarchy? That your
daughter has turned into a crazy woman who advocates not only equality
for Third World people, for women, but for gays as well? Please don’t
shudder, Ma, when I speak of homosexuality. Until we can all present
ourselves to the world in our completeness, as fully and beautifully as we
see ourselves naked in our bedrooms, we are not free.
After what seems like hours of talking, I realize it is not talking at all,
but the filling up of time with sounds that say, “I am your daughter, you are
my mother, and we are keeping each other company, and that is enough.”
But it is not enough because my life has been formed by your life. Together
we have lived one hundred and eleven years in this country as yellow
women, and it is not enough to enunciate words and words and words and
then to have them only mean that we have been keeping each other
company. I desperately want you to understand me and my work, Ma, to
know what I am doing! When you distort what I say, like thinking I am
against all “Caucasians” or that I am ashamed of Dad, then I feel anger and
more frustration and want to slash out, not at you, but at those external
forces which keep us apart. What deepens the chasms between us are our
different reactions to those forces. Yours has been one of silence, self-
denial, self-effacement; you believing it is your fault that you never fully
experienced self-pride and freedom of choice. But listen, Ma, only with a
deliberate consciousness is my reaction different from yours.
When I look at you, there are images: images of you as a little ten-
year-old Korean girl, being sent alone from Shanghai to the United States,
in steerage with only one skimpy little dress, being sick and lonely on
Angel Island for three months; then growing up in a “Home” run by white
missionary women. Scrubbing floors on your hands and knees, hauling coal
in heavy metal buckets up three flights of stairs, tending to the younger
children, putting hot bricks on your cheeks to deaden the pain from the
terrible toothaches you always had. Working all your life as maid, waitress,
salesclerk, office worker, mother. But throughout there is an image of you
as strong and courageous, and persevering: climbing out of windows to
escape from the Home, then later, from an abusive first husband. There is so
much more to these images than I can say, but I think you know what I
mean. Escaping out of windows offered only temporary respites; surviving
is an everyday chore. You gave me, physically, what you never had, but
there was a spiritual, emotional legacy you passed down which was
reinforced by society: self-contempt because of our race, our sex, our
sexuality. For deeply ingrained in me, Ma, there has been that strong,
compulsive force to sink into self-contempt, passivity, and despair. I am
sure that my fifteen years of alcohol abuse have not been forgotten by either
of us, nor my suicidal depressions.
Now, I know you are going to think that I hate and despise you for
your self-hatred, for your isolation. But I don’t. Because in spite of your
withdrawal, in spite of your loneliness, you have not only survived, but
been beside me in the worst of times when your company meant everything
in the world to me. I just need more than that now, Ma. I have taken and
taken from you in terms of needing you to mother me, to be by my side, and
I need, now, to take from you two more things: understanding and support
for who I am now and my work.
We are Asian American women and the reaction to our identity is what
causes the chasms instead of connections. But do you realize, Ma, that I
could never have reacted the way I have if you had not provided for me the
opportunity to be free of the binds that have held you down, and to be in the
process of self-affirmation? 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 just that kind of social change that will
affirm me, my race, my sex, my heritage. And while I affirm myself, Ma, I
affirm you.
Today, I am satisfied to call myself either an Asian American Feminist
or Yellow Feminist. The two terms are inseparable because race and sex are
an integral part of me. This means that I am working with others to realize
pride in culture and women and heritage (the heritage that is the exploited
yellow immigrant: Daddy and you). Being a Yellow Feminist means being a
community activist and a humanist. It does not mean “separatism,” either
by cutting myself off from non-Asians or men. It does not mean retaining
the same power structure and substituting women in positions of control
held by men. It does mean fighting the whites and the men who abuse us,
straight-jacket us and tape our mouths; it means changing the economic
class system and psychological forces (sexism, racism, and homophobia)
that really hurt all of us. And I do this, not in isolation, but in the
community.
We no longer can afford to stand back and watch while an insatiable
elite ravages and devours resources that are enough for all of us. The
obstacles are so huge and overwhelming that often I do become cynical and
want to give up. And if I were struggling alone, I know I would never even
attempt to put into action what I believe in my heart, that (and this is
primarily because of you, Ma) Yellow Women are strong and have the
potential to be powerful and effective leaders.
I can hear you asking now, “Well, what do you mean by ‘social change
and leadership’? And how are you going to go about it?” To begin with, we
must wipe out the circumstances that keep us down in silence and self-
effacement. Right now, my techniques are education and writing. Yellow
Feminist means being a core for change, and that core means having the
belief in our potential as human beings. I will work with anyone, support
anyone, who shares my sensibility, my objectives. But there are barriers to
unity: white women who are racist, and Asian American men who are
sexist. My very being declares that those two groups do not share my
complete sensibility. I would be fragmented, mutilated, if I did not fight
against racism and sexism together.
And this is when the pain of the struggle hits home. How many white
women have taken on the responsibility to educate themselves about Third
World people, their history, their culture? How many white women really
think about the stereotypes they retain as truth about women of color? But
the perpetuation of dehumanizing stereotypes is really very helpful for
whites; they use them to justify their giving us the lowest wages and all the
work they don’t want to perform. Ma, how can we believe things are
changing when as a nurse’s aide during World War II, you were given only
the tasks of changing the bed linen, removing bed pans, taking urine
samples, and then only three years ago as a retired volunteer worker in a
local hospital, white women gave themselves desk jobs and gave you, at
sixty-nine, the same work you did in 1943? Today you speak more fondly
of being a nurse’s aide during World War II and how proud you are of the
fact that the Red Cross showed its appreciation for your service by giving
you a diploma. Still in 1980, the injustices continue. I can give you so many
examples of groups which are “feminist” in which women of color were
given the usual least important tasks, the shitwork, and given no say in how
that group is to be run. Needless to say, those Third World women, like you,
dropped out, quit.
Working in writing and teaching, I have seen how white women
condescend to Third World women, reasoning that because of our
oppression, which they know nothing about, we are behind them and their
“progressive ideas” in the struggle for freedom. They don’t even look at
history! At the facts! How we as Asian American women have always been
fighting for more than mere survival, but were never acknowledged because
we were in our communities, invisible, but not inaccessible.
And I get so tired of being the instant resource for information on
Asian American women. Being the token representative, going from class
to class, group to group, bleeding for white women so they can have an
easy answer and then—and this is what really gets to me—they usually
leave to never continue their education about us on their own.
To the racist white female professor who says, “If I have to watch
everything I say I wouldn’t say anything,” I want to say, “Then get out of
teaching.”
To the white female poet who says, “Well, frankly, I believe that
politics and poetry don’t necessarily have to go together,” I say, “Your little
taste of white privilege has deluded you into thinking that you don’t have to
fight against sexism in this society. You are talking to me from your own
isolation and your own racism. If you feel that you don’t have to fight for
me, that you don’t have to speak out against capitalism, the exploitation of
human and natural resources, then you in your silence, your inability to
make connections, are siding with a system that will eventually get you,
after it has gotten me. And if you think that’s not a political stance, you’re
more than simply deluded, you’re crazy!”
This is the same white voice that says, “I am writing about and looking
for themes that are ‘universal.’ ” Well, most of the time when “universal” is
used, it is just a euphemism for “white”: white themes, white significance,
white culture. And denying minority groups their rightful place and time in
US history is simply racist.
Yes, Ma, I am mad. I carry the anger from my own experience and the
anger you couldn’t afford to express, and even that is often misinterpreted
no matter how hard I try to be clear about my position. A white woman in
my class said to me a couple of months ago, “I feel that Third World
women hate me and that they are being racist; I’m being stereotyped, and
I’ve never been part of the ruling class.” I replied, “Please try to understand.
Know our history. Know the racism of whites, how deep it goes. Know that
we are becoming ever more intolerant of those people who let their
ignorance be their excuse for their complacency, their liberalism, when this
country (this world!) is going to hell in a handbasket. Try to understand that
our distrust is from experience, and that our distrust is powerless. Racism is
an essential part of the status quo, powerful, and continues to keep us down.
It is a rule taught to all of us from birth. Is it no wonder that we fear there
are no exceptions?”
And as if the grief we go through working with white women weren’t
enough—so close to home, in our community, and so very painful, is the
lack of support we get from some of our Asian American brothers. Here is a
quote from a rather prominent male writer ranting on about a Yellow
“sister”:

… I can only believe that such blatant sucking off of the identity
is the work of a Chinese American woman, another Jade Snow
Wong Pochahontas yellow. Pussywhipped again. Oh, damn,
pussywhipped again.

Chinese American woman: “another Jade Snow Wong Pochahontas

yellow.” According to him, Chinese American women sold out—are
contemptuous of their culture, pathetically strain all their lives to be white,
hate Asian American men, and so marry white men (the John Smiths)—or
just like Pochahontas: we rescue white men while betraying our fathers;
then marry white men, get baptized, and go to dear old England to become
curiosities of the civilized world. Whew! Now, that’s an indictment! (Of all
women of color.) Some of the male writers in the Asian American
community seem never to support us. They always expect us to support
them, and you know what? We almost always do. And Yellow men? Are
they kidding? We go to their readings, buy and read and comment on their
books, and try to keep up a dialogue. And they accuse us of betrayal, are
resentful because we do readings together as Women, and so often do not
come to our performances. And all the while we hurt because we are
rejected by our brothers. The Pochahontas image used by a Chinese
American man points out a tragic truth: the white man and his ideology are
still over us and between us. These men of color, with clear vision, fight the
racism in white society, but have bought the white male definition of
“masculinity”: men only should take on the leadership in the community
because the qualities of “originality, daring, physical courage, and
creativity” are “traditionally masculine.”1
Some Asian men don’t seem to understand that by supporting Third
World women and fighting sexism, they are helping themselves as well. I
understand all too clearly how dehumanized Dad was in this country. To be
a Chinese man in America is to be a victim of both racism and sexism. He
was made to feel he was without strength, identity, and purpose. He was
made to feel soft and weak, whose only job was to serve whites. Yes, Ma, at
one time I was ashamed of him because I thought he was “womanly.” When
those two white cops said, “Hey, fat boy, where’s our meat?” he left me
standing there on Grant Avenue while he hurried over to his store to get it;
they kept complaining, never satisfied, “That piece isn’t good enough.
What’s the matter with you, fat boy? Don’t you have respect? Don’t wrap
that meat in newspapers either; use the good stuff over there.” I didn’t know
that he spent a year and a half on Angel Island; that we could never have
our right names; that he lived in constant fear of being deported; that, like
you, he worked two full-time jobs most of his life; that he was mocked and
ridiculed because he speaks “broken English.” And Ma, I was so ashamed
after that experience when I was only six years old that I never held his
hand again.
Today, as I write to you of all these memories, I feel even more deeply
hurt when I realize how many people, how so many people, because of
racism and sexism, fail to see what power we sacrifice by not joining hands.
But not all white women are racist, and not all Asian American men
are sexist. And we choose to trust them, love and work with them. And
there are visible changes. Real tangible, positive changes. The changes I
love to see are those changes within ourselves.
Your grandchildren, my children, Emily and Paul. That makes three
generations. Emily loves herself. Always has. There are shades of self-
doubt but much less than in you or me. She says exactly what she thinks,
most of the time, either in praise or in criticism of herself or others. And at
sixteen she goes after whatever she wants, usually center stage. She trusts
and loves people, regardless of race or sex (but, of course, she’s cautious),
loves her community and works in it, speaks up against racism and sexism
in school. Did you know that she got Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker
on her reading list for a Southern Writers class when there were only white
authors? That she insisted on changing a script done by an Asian American
man when she saw that the depiction of the character she was playing was
sexist? That she went to a California State House Conference to speak out
for Third World students’ needs?
And what about her little brother, Paul? Twelve years old. And
remember, Ma? At one of our Saturday Night Family Dinners, how he
lectured Ronnie (his uncle, yet!) about how he was a male chauvinist? Paul
told me once how he knew he had to fight to be Asian American, and later
he added that if it weren’t for Emily and me, he wouldn’t have to think
about feminist stuff, too. He says he can hardly enjoy a movie or TV
program anymore because of the sexism. Or comic books. And he is very
much aware of the different treatment he gets from adults: “You have to do
everything right,” he said to Emily, “and I can get away with almost
anything.”
Emily and Paul give us hope, Ma. Because they are proud of who they
are, and they care so much about our culture and history. Emily was the first
to write your biography because she knows how crucial it is to get our
stories in writing.
Ma, I wish I knew the histories of the women in our family before you.
I bet that would be quite a story. But that may be just as well, because I can
say that you started something. Maybe you feel ambivalent or doubtful
about it, but you did. Actually, you should be proud of what you’ve begun. I
am. If my reaction to being a Yellow Woman is different than yours was,
please know that that is not a judgment on you, a criticism or denial of you,
your worth. I have always supported you, and as the years pass, I think I
begin to understand you more and more.
In the last few years, I have realized the value of Homework: I have
studied the history of our people in this country. I cannot tell you how proud
I am to be a Chinese/Korean American Woman. We have such a proud
heritage, such a courageous tradition. I want to tell everyone about that, all
the particulars that are left out in the schools. And the full awareness of
being a woman makes me want to sing. And I do sing with other Asian
Americans and women, Ma, anyone who will sing with me.
 I feel now that I can begin to put our lives in a larger framework. Ma, a
larger framework! The outlines for us are time and blood, but today there is
breadth possible through making connections with others involved in
community struggle. In loving ourselves for who we are—American
women of color—we can make a vision for the future where we are free to
fulfill our human potential. This new framework will not support
repression, hatred, exploitation and isolation, but will be a human and
beautiful framework, created in a community, bonded not by color, sex or
class, but by love and the common goal for the liberation of mind, heart,
and spirit.
Ma, today, you are as beautiful and pure to me as the picture I have of
you, as a little girl, under my dresser-glass.
I love you,
Merle

Note
1. Frank Chin, Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, eds., AIIEEEE! An
Anthology of Asian American Writers (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1974).
I Come with No Illusions
Mirtha N. Quintanales

Columbus, Ohio
December 27, 1979

Querida Chabela (Isabel Yrigoyen),

… Woman love. Never knew it would be so hard to leave anyone.
Even though it means everything to me to move on, to finally embark on
this self-healing journey. Torn by guilt. My lover. Working-class “white”
woman from a small town. She has no more privileges than I do. As alone
as I am. She is not my enemy. World upside down.
… What lies ahead? A mystery. Do not dare even consider the
possibility of a love relationship with a Latina, a Cuban woman, even to
dream that I could find such partnership … family. Work. It is my life. It is
all I have. It is what now ultimately propels me to make this move. You, my
friends, will sweeten my life. I know that. But I come to you with no
illusions. I join you because I must. Give of myself to those who can give to
me of themselves. Sisters. Sharing. I look for, expect nothing more. Is there
really something more?
Setting myself up? Closing up, putting up barriers? Perhaps. Perhaps
just trying to be “my own woman.” Perhaps just trying to be one, not one-
half. Can I find happiness “alone”? Americans tell me that I should strive
for this blessed state of self-contentment as “one” if I intend to survive. Yet
often I have doubts. Is this the kind of world I want to live in? A world
where ultimately only the “I” matters? Millions of people living in self-
constructed little boxes, Incommunicado.
I ponder over the meaning and possible repercussions of the choices I
am about to make. What does it mean to say to myself that only other
Latina, bicultural lesbian women can satisfy my needs? What are the
implications of separating myself from American women and creating a
separate community with women I identify as my counterparts?
It means, for one thing, that I am admitting failure. Failure to adjust,
adapt, change, transcend cultural differences. Yet this is not only a personal
failure. It is one which I share with millions. The reality of ethnic minority
enclaves throughout the world tells me a great deal about the process I am
going through. It is neither unique nor new. And ultimately it may have a
lot more to do with “success” than with failure. It is after all, a survival
strategy—particularly in the context of a power imbalance between
“natives” and “foreigners”—where the latter are in a better bargaining
position as a group than as scattered individuals fighting their own personal
battles.
For myself—as a Latina lesbian/feminist, it also means a real
narrowing of options and privileges. I have extremely limited resources. No
money, no access to power, no legitimacy. If there are many like me I do
not know. Nor is it going to be easy for me to connect with them if I should
learn that there are. Their resources are likely to be as limited as mine. This
is a socio-economic, political reality that acts as a barrier to the formation
of a strong and visible community. Not only the “social goodies” (money,
power, fame, and other minor privileges) but life’s necessities (a job, a roof
over my head …) depend on my ties, my interactions with American men
and women. To say “I do not like the nature of this tie with the powerful” is
dangerous; for the implications are that I may strive to break free from it
and in doing so reduce my chances of making it in this society.
But what of human feeling? It is, after all, great personal need, not
political analysis that drives me to take this stand, to turn away from my
American sisters and put all my energies into creating a community with
my Latina sisters. What is the nature and significance of this need? Is it true
that love knows no boundaries? Or that being “human” somehow means
being ultimately undifferentiated—“all alike”? Perhaps one of the greatest
lessons I have learned is that in fact “human nature,” bound as it is to
“culture,” implies variability and difference. Yes, we all need to eat and
sleep, keep ourselves warm, protect ourselves from harm, be nurtured into
maturity; touch and be touched, etc. But, how we choose to meet these
needs varies and changes from time to time, place to place and is dependent
both on history and the particular set of environmental circumstances
contextual to our lives. What both puzzles me and distresses me is the
degree to which we seem to be “culture bound.” As if “setting the cultural
mold” implied never quite being able to break free from it. At least not
completely. This seems to be particularly true in the most private activities
of our lives—how we express and share feeling in the context of our
intimate interpersonal relationships. The wonder of it! And the pain …

Con mucho cariño, tu amiga

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

Columbus, Ohio
January, 1980

Dear Barbara (Smith),

Thanks for your letter. I can appreciate your taking the time to write. It
can get so difficult for busy people to keep up with correspondence … I
only hope that you have taken some time to rest, gather your energies. I’m
just beginning to emerge from a several-week period of semi-hermitdom
myself. I, too, was exhausted. Too much work, too many responsibilities—
often the worry of not moving fast enough, or too fast to have any kind of
an impact. After a brief peaceful interlude, the pressures are beginning to
build again. Oh well …
I wanted to tell you about my visit to San Francisco, about coming
together with my Latina lesbian/feminist sisters. The joy and the pain of
finding each other, of realizing how long we’ve “done without,” of how
difficult it’s going to be to heal ourselves, to find our voices … But how
perfectly wonderful to finally have a family, a community. Yet I find that
there is too much to tell. Cannot easily compress it all in a letter. How I
wish that we could meet and talk! So much of the Black lesbian/feminist
experience speaks to our own … I passed around all the literature you’d
handed out at conferences—including Conditions 5. And the Latina sisters
were amazed. Lorraine Bethel’s “What Chou Mean We White Girl?” was
especially telling … Many of our feelings given form, meaning. Please let
her know that her work has been very helpful to us—particularly in sorting
out what we want and don’t want in our relationships with white,
mainstream American feminists. Yes, there is a lot we can learn from each
other.
 But Barbara, I am worried. At the moment I am in the process of
organizing a roundtable for the NWSA1 conference, on the topic of racial
and ethnic minority lesbians in the US. There are two other women
involved—a Greek friend of mine from Berkeley, and a Black woman from
San Francisco. And I feel the tension building. The Greek woman’s many
attempts to “connect” with Third World lesbians and “Women of Color”
(most poignantly at last year’s conference) have been met with outright
rejection. Unfortunately, being loud, aggressive and very Greek-identified,
she has found a great deal of rejection in white, mainstream lesbian/feminist
circles as well. Clearly she does not fit there either.
The Black woman’s commitments, from what I can gather, are
understandably with Third World women, women of color. And I am quite
uncomfortably in the middle. As a Third World, Caribbean woman I
understand what it means to have grown up “colonized” in a society built
on slavery and the oppression of imperialist forces. As an immigrant and a
cultural minority woman who happens to be white-skinned, I empathize
with the pain of ethnic invisibility and the perils of passing (always a very
tenuous situation—since acknowledgment of ethnic ties is inevitably
accompanied by stereotyping, prejudice, and various kinds of
discrimination—the problem is not just personal, but “systemic,”
“political”—one more reality of American “life”). How to reconcile these
different kinds of “primary emergencies”: race and culture? Of course this
kind of conflict tends to obscure the issue of class and its relationship to
race and ethnicity so important for the understanding of the dilemma.
Not all Third World women are “women of color”—if by this concept
we mean exclusively “non-white.” I am only one example. And not all
women of color are really Third World—if this term is only used in
reference to underdeveloped or developing societies (especially those not
allied with any superpower). Clearly then it would be difficult to justify
referring to Japanese women, who are women of color, as Third World
women. Yet, if we extend the concept of Third World to include internally
“colonized” racial and ethnic minority groups in this country, so many
different kinds of groups could be conceivably included, that the crucial
issue of social and institutional racism and its historic tie to slavery in the
US could get diluted, lost in the shuffle. The same thing would likely
happen if we extended the meaning of “women of color” to include all
those women in this country who are victims of prejudice and
discrimination (in many respects), but who nevertheless hold racial
privileges and may even be racists.
I don’t know what to think anymore. Things begin to get even more
complicated when I begin to consider that many of us who identify as
“Third World” or “Women of Color” have grown up as, or are fast
becoming, “middle class” and highly educated, and therefore more
privileged than many of our white, poor and working-class sisters.
Sometimes I get angry at my lover because she does not seem to relate to
my being a “Cuban” lesbian. And yet, can I really relate to the fact that she
grew up in a very small town, in a working-class family—with little money,
few other resources, little encouragement to get an education, etc.?
Yes … and no. There have been times in my life when my family had little
money or food. There have been times in my life when I lived from day to
day not knowing if I would be alive “tomorrow”—not knowing really how
it felt to plan for “next month,” or “next year.”
Yet, even though I grew up having to heat my bathwater and sleep in a
very lumpy bed, even though I grew up often being ashamed of bringing
my friends home because our furniture was old and dilapidated, I went to
private schools, spent summers at the beach, traveled, had plenty of toys
and books to read; took music and dancing lessons, went horseback riding
—my parents being very conscious of, and being very able to give us the
best (if not always in terms of material comforts) that their middle-class
resources gave them access to—including the services of a long string of
nurse-maids (my mother worked, and in Cuba often the maids had maids—
even if it meant putting little girls to work as servants and baby-tenders—
economic exploitation galore!).
Yes, I have suffered in this country. I have been the victim of blatant
prejudice and institutional discrimination. As an ethnic minority woman
and a lesbian I have lived in the margins, in fear, isolated, disconnected,
silent and in pain. Nevertheless, those early years of relatively “blissful”
middle-class childhood (although I have to say that after age 7 it was hell—
political violence and death always lurking) in my own country where I was
simply part of the “mainstream” if not a little better off because of my
father’s professional status, have served me as a “cushion” throughout my
life. Even in the United States, as an essentially middle-class (and white-
skinned) woman, I have had “opportunities” (or have known how to make
them for myself) that my very white, working-class American lover has
never had.
Having managed to graduate from college (one out of three in her
graduating high school class who managed to make it to college) against
tremendous odds, she is still struggling with the fact that she may never
really learn the ropes of surviving well in mainstream, middle-class
American society. And, need I add that mainstream white, middle-class
American feminism is as insensitive to her needs as it is to mine?
I realize that I cannot fight everybody’s battles. But need I create false
enemies in order to wage my own? I am a bit concerned when a Latina
lesbian sister generalizes about/puts down the “white woman”—especially
if she herself has white skin. In the midst of this labeling, might she not
dismiss the fact of her own white privileges—regardless of her
identification with Black, Native American, and other Third World women
of color? Might she not dismiss the fact that she may often be far better off
than many white women? I cannot presume to know what it is really like to
be a Black woman in America, to be racially oppressed. I cannot presume to
know what it is really like to grow up American “White Trash” and
destitute.
But I am also a bit concerned when a Black sister generalizes
about/dismisses all non-black women, or all women who are not strictly
“women of color” or strictly “Third World.” If you are not WASP in this
country, if you or your family have known the immigrant experience or
ghetto life, you are likely to be very much acquainted with the social,
economic political reality of internal colonization. Yes, racism is a BIG
MONSTER we all need to contend with—regardless of our skin color and
ethnic affiliation. But I think we need to keep in mind that in this country, in
this world, racism is used both to create false differences among us and to
mask very very significant ones—cultural economic, political … And yes,
those who have been racially oppressed must create separatist spaces to
explore the meaning of their experiences—to heal themselves, to gather
their energies, their strength, to develop their own voices, to build their
armies. And yes, those of us who have not been victims of racial oppression
must come to terms with our own racism, our own complicity with this
system that discriminates and oppresses on the basis of skin color and body
features. 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 … And even if everybody’s skin should
suddenly turn black, it would be quite impossible to truly know what it
means to have grown up—generation after generation—Black and female
in America. Of course our skin is not likely to “turn,” and so regardless of
how “conscious” we claim to be of the “Black experience” in America, we
shall always be limited by our own history and the reality of our white skin
and the privileges it automatically confers on us.
Ironically, when a Black American sister (or anyone for that matter)
puts me, or other ethnic women of this society in the same category with the
socially dominant White American Woman on the basis of lighter-than-
black skin color, she is in fact denying my history, my culture, my identity,
my very being, my pain and my struggle. She, too, is being personally
racist. When she fails to recognize that the “social privileges” of lighter-
than-black ethnic-minority lesbians in this society are almost totally
dependent on our denial of who we are, on our ethnic death, she also falls
prey to the racist mythology that color differences are the end-all
indications of social inequality. That those who happen to have the “right”
skin color are not only all alike but all hold the same social privileges. Yes,
lighter-than-black skin color may confer on some ethnic minority women
the option of becoming “assimilated,” “integrated” in mainstream American
society. But is this really a privilege when it always means having to
become invisible, ghost-like, identity-less, community-less, totally
alienated? The perils of “passing” as white American are perils indeed. It
should be easy enough at least for lesbians to understand the meaning of
being and yet not being, of “merging” and yet remaining utterly alone and
in the margins of our society.
And while it is true that a lesbian/feminist community and culture have
emerged, while it is true that Black, Latina and other Third World/lesbians
“of color” have begun to speak up, it is not true that we have yet engaged in
a truly un-biased, unprejudiced dialogue. We are still measuring each other
by the yardstick of the White, Capitalist, Imperialist, Racist American
Patriarch. We are still seeing radical differences when they don’t exist and
not seeing them when they are critical. And most disastrously, we are
failing to recognize much of what we share. Is it not possible for us to
recognize, respect and settle our differences; to validate our various groups’
struggles and need for separate spaces, and yet to open our eyes to the fact
that divided we are only likely to succeed at defeat?
It is pure folly to think that a small group of Latina or Black or
Chinese American lesbians can, on its own, create a feminist revolution. It
is pure folly to think that middle-class WASP feminists can do so …
Barbara, I ache to live with and love with my Latina lesbian/feminist
sisters—to speak “Spanglish,” to eat arroz con frijoles, to dance salsa, to
openly talk sex and flirt with one another; to secretly pray to Yemayá,
Changó, Oshún, and the Virgen de Guadalupe. I run to them for refuge, for
dear life!
But when I meet you and other Black lesbian sisters—and am moved
by what we seem to share, I ache for you also. I spend time with Stacy
(Anastasia) and other Southern European/North African/Mediterranean
lesbian sisters—and am stirred by what we seem to have in common, I feel
deep yearning for them … I read the words of other ethnic American
lesbian sisters and I find that I understand them and want to share in these
women’s lives. And I live, love and work with working-class sisters. Have
lived, loved and worked in the poor urban ghettos of Chicago and Boston.
Have spent some time in the poor, rural, isolated mountains of New
Mexico. Have traveled to Latin American countries, to India, Thailand,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan—feeling the pain of my poor and hard-working
sisters—struggling against all odds to stay alive, to live with dignity. I
cannot sleep sometimes—haunted by the memories of such all-
encompassing poverty—the kind of poverty that even poor Americans
could not begin to conceive. India. India was the unraveling. How
insignificant our troubles seem in the United States … How ridiculously
small my own struggles … I don’t feel guilt or shame, but this nausea … To
find us squabbling over who may or may not be called a feminist, who may
or may not join or take part in this or that particular political group, etc., etc.
The privilege of having feminist “groups”—most women in the world just
eat shit. And lesbians—who really knows the fate of most lesbians in the
world, especially the Third World?
Is it not possible for all of us here in America to turn right now to all
the sisters of the world—to form a common, human-woman-lesbian bond?
 I have lost some sleep lately pondering over this race/culture/class
problem … We’ve got to do something! Many of us Latinas are non-white
—as a matter of fact, most of us are racially mixed to various degrees. Ask
a Black or “mulatto” Puerto Rican woman what her identity is, though, and
most likely she will tell you “Puerto Rican.” All Chinese American women
are non-white. But ask any of them what her identity is. She will not tell
you “yellow,” she will tell you Chinese, or Chinese American. Many
African peoples are “Black,” but ask a Nigerian, an Ethiopian, etc., what
her identity is, and she will tell you “Nigerian,” or “Ethiopian,” or
whatever … Obviously “Black Culture” is an American phenomenon.
Many of us don’t really understand this. I know I didn’t for a long time.
When I first came to this country I just assumed that Black people were
simply American (for that matter I just assumed all Americans shared the
same kind of “American Culture”). I grew up with people of all kinds of
skin color—but we were all Cuban and understood each other, even though
we could recognize the most minute “color differences,” even though we
could recognize class differences. How was I supposed to know—given the
propaganda—that there was no such thing as a “melting pot”? How was I
supposed to know that racism was so widespread and so deeply ingrained in
American society? I was shocked in my sophomore year in college when
several Black women implied that I was a racist when I said I could not
figure out what was different about being Black or Yellow, or White, or Red
in the United States. I could understand not knowing about a “culture,” but
not knowing about a “race”? Was “race” per se so important? Was it really
linked to a “culture”? This was a weird notion to me indeed!
Well I paid very hard for my immigrant ignorance. I’m still paying—
even though I have learned a great deal since then about American sub-
cultures and about American racism. Many of my Latina sisters have had
similar experiences, and the big question is always there—Will we ever
really be accepted by our Black American sisters? I cannot really convey
the pain—especially in those of us who are Afro-Hispanic-American but
light skinned—of seeing so much of ourselves in, and of being so drawn to,
African-American women, and yet feeling that we are very likely to be
denied a connection, to be rejected. The fucking irony of it! Racism. It has
so thoroughly poisoned Americans of all colors that many of us can simply
not see beyond it. I’m sorry about this long letter Barbara—especially this
last part. But I have not been able to get over this pain. I used to have this
recurrent dream (for years) that I would alternately become black and white
and black and white over and over and over again … It felt really good. But
I’ve never quite figured out all of what it meant … Well, take care Barbara.
In sisterhood,
Mirtha

Note
1. National Women’s Studies Association.
Earth-Lover, Survivor, Musician
Naomi Littlebear Moreno

The following is an excerpt from a letter in response to Cherríe’s

request that Naomi write an essay on “language & oppression”
as a Chicana.
January, 1980

Cherríe,
I have a clear image in my mind about the things we talked about, your
anger about language, identification—given the brief acquaintance, I
personally could relate to a lot of what you were saying—i realize that those
feelings had a lot to do with why i wrote the book i’m sending you1—that
was a very important time in my life. However I realize now that it wasn’t
for me exactly the most balanced part of my life. It was only a time in
which i hurt so bad i had to shake off the dust of one too many insults in
order to carry on. Nonetheless, my criticism, analysis, etc., did not come
from a natural place in me. It was not the “voice of my mothers” nor did it
completely reflect the way i was brought up to be. I wrote that book as a
brown woman’s retort to white people, white middle-class leftists who were
trying to redirect my spirit. I was supposed to be the angry chicana speaking
her vengeance against whites, against the capitalist system.

I am a sad chicana lesbian woman who is a woman-identified

earth lover, survivor, musician—music and beauty are my tools
against my aches and pains—striving to bring peace into an
otherwise tumultuous past.

I am not the scholar analyst you are—which I totally respect. I’m clear
about why i am and how i am—i cannot extricate the lesbian from my soul
no more than i could the chicana—i have always been both.
 The woman I am right now is not struggling with language—this time
—i am closest and clearest right now about violence—i am haunted by
dreams from my childhood and not-too-distant past. I could not adequately
write about language unless i was right there with the problem, as you seem
to be—you are fairly bursting with reasons and important thoughts, insights
into our mutual experience with the degradation and denial that came with
our language loss (abduction?).
Imagine the process you would have to go thru if I asked you to write
me a paper on violence in the barrios and how that affected your personal
life? I need to feel control of my own life—violence has on some deep level
rendered me helpless and given me a deep fear of being powerless—our
language being stripped from us creates similar fears. I need to figure out
what is closest to me. I have done some work in exorcising the demons of
communication—my current observation is that i feel comfortable with
words again, except when i try to make scientific discoveries—that is me
reacting to male energy that says women are stupid & emotional.
My emotions & intuitions are there for a purpose. They are honest
perceptions. I don’t have to try to be grassroots. I do have to try to relate my
straight feminist politics.
Wanting to be loving and have a family is my connection with my
culture. I am doing that. Going to meetings is not part of my ethnic
background.
I got real turned around when i got involved with leftist politics. I am
now trying to piece my life together, discard the violence & humiliations,
accept that i am a complete person with nothing lacking. My mind and heart
are capable of deciding what’s best for me.
For once in my life i have to let my self deserve a home, food on the
table, and a handful of loving friends—this is a time of healing and taking
the blame of the rapes and attempted rapes, the child beatings i received,
taking all that pain off my shoulders and giving it back to whom it belongs.
I want you to accept me as i accept you. Be an amiga, not a comrade to
me. I will send you more words if you like but right now the hurt’s all
around me and i feel like flying away. I will fight back with music, but
don’t ask me to fight with words. Trust my instincts, my knowledge—i am
not a sheltered little wetback—i’ve been through so much pain that i’ve
popped out the other side. We have been thru so much pain that now we
have no place to put that pain but to leave it out of our lives—because the
pain was given to do its worst damage by festering in our soul, by growing
comfortable in our flesh that we more often hurt each other ’tho infested by
the same disease.
I have no solution but to go on. I will not carry the stigma that so many
have tried to burden me with. These words are mine because this now is my
language—13 years of English, 13 years of Spanish—that’s when I flipped
out—the day of my two “children’s” anniversary. I was prompted by devils
—clinical radicals who instructed me in self-autopsy. Please applaud my
victory over those fuckers—it is your victory as well—remember they think
we’re all related. We’re not at all where they expected us to be—we just
slipped through—because we knew damn well it was a lie.
I refuse to be separated from your life by these words. I read you loud
& clear: the story-telling, my crazy aunts, the laughter, deep-hearted joy,
celebrating anything with a six-pack of beer.2
I remember. And as long as i know you too were once there—it is
something that can warm us both this winter.
Because i haven’t seen my cousins in years.
That is what i miss, that is what i’m looking for.
March 23, 1980

Now that the ice has melted and the flowers begin to bloom i welcome the
season of growing. Thank you for sharing with me. I do believe we have in
common—the cultural rip-off, the anger, the wisdom, the fullness of life.
… I have started this letter many times, wanting to send you these
stories. I appreciated your letter very much. It’s still on my desk reminding
me how hard we are working to be visible. We are touring again, maybe
we’ll meet.

Notes
1. The Dark of the Moon. (Portland: Olive Press, 1977). Book of essays & poetry on life in the
barrio, and the topics of the Church, Family, Education & the Left.
2. Here Naomi is referring to experiences Cherríe describes in her essay “La Guëra.” (Editors’
note, 1981)
 V

Speaking in Tongues
The Third World Woman Writer
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Aveugle Voix (Blind Voice), 1975
Black & white photograph, image #3, 9.75″ × 6.5″
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Gift of the Theresa Hak
Kyung Cha Foundation
Speaking in Tongues
The Third World Woman Writer

Who am I, a poor Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write?

—Gloria Anzaldúa

As first generation writers, we defy the myth that the color of our skins
prevents us from using the pen to create. We come from that history, yes; as
Gabrielle Daniels conveys in her poem of the silenced writings of
“Millicent Fredericks.” But, the face of “American” Literature is radically
changing as women of color begin to publish in and out of the mainstream.
Still, it is not enough to have our books published. We must also actively
engage in establishing the criteria and the standards by which our work can
be viewed. As Barbara Smith laid the groundwork in developing literary
criticism for Black women in “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,”1 here
Norma Alarcón plants the seed which germinates a feminist criticism
involving the history, mythology, and writings of La Chicana. This article
represents the kind of literary criticism that is beginning to appear in every
segment of the Third World women’s community.
We are Third World women writers, so similar yet so different—
similar in the issues we confront, different in approach and style. What we
have in common is our love of writing and a love of the literature of women
of color. In our common struggle and in our writing we reclaim our tongues.
We wield a pen as a tool, a weapon, a means of survival, a magic wand that
will attract power, that will draw self-love into our bodies.
And though often we may feel ambivalent about our devotion to the
female self, we continue to swim fearless with the length of our own bodies
(Wong) in a sea of words. We continue to swim toward that raft and lifeline
which is ourself—ourself as mother, ourself as hero. What we choose
finally is to cultivate our colored skins.
 a teacher taught me
more than she knew
patting me on the head
putting words in my head
—“pretty little Indian girl!”
saving them—
going to give them
back to her one day …
—Anna Lee Walters2

A woman who writes has power. A woman with power is feared. In the eyes
of the world this makes us dangerous beasts.

Notes
1. Conditions 2 (October 1977).
2. Dexter Fisher, ed., The Third Woman: Minority Women Writers in the US. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1980), 109.
Speaking in Tongues
A Letter to Third World Women Writers1

Gloria Anzaldúa

21 mayo 80
Dear mujeres de color, companions in writing—
I sit here naked in the sun, typewriter against my knee trying to
visualize you. Black woman huddles over a desk on the fifth floor of some
New York tenement. Sitting on a porch in south Texas, a Chicana fanning
away mosquitos and the hot air, trying to arouse the smoldering embers of
writing. Indian woman walking to school or work lamenting the lack of
time to weave writing into your life. Asian American, lesbian, single
mother, tugged in all directions by children, lover or ex-husband, and the
writing.
It is not easy writing this letter. It began as a poem, a long poem. I tried
to turn it into an essay but the result was wooden, cold. I have not yet
unlearned the esoteric bullshit and pseudo-intellectualizing that school
brainwashed into my writing.
How to begin again. How to approximate the intimacy and immediacy
I want. What form? A letter, of course.
My dear hermanas, the dangers we face as women writers of color are
not the same as those of white women though we have many in common.
We don’t have as much to lose—we never had any privileges. I wanted to
call the dangers “obstacles” but that would be a kind of lying. We can’t
transcend the dangers, can’t rise above them. We must go through them and
hope we won’t have to repeat the performance.
Unlikely to be friends of people in high literary places, the beginning
woman of color is invisible both in the white male mainstream world and in
the white women’s feminist world, though in the latter this is gradually
changing. The lesbian of color is not only invisible, she doesn’t even exist.
Our speech, too, is inaudible. We speak in tongues like the outcast and the
insane.
Because white eyes do not want to know us, they do not bother to learn
our language, the language which reflects us, our culture, our spirit. The
schools we attended or didn’t attend did not give us the skills for writing
nor the confidence that we were correct in using our class and ethnic
languages. I, for one, became adept at, and majored in English to spite, to
show up, the arrogant racist teachers who thought all Chicano children were
dumb and dirty. And Spanish was not taught in grade school. And Spanish
was not required in High School. And though now I write my poems in
Spanish as well as English I feel the rip-off of my native tongue.

I lack imagination you say

No. I lack language.

The language to clarify
my resistance to the literate.
Words are a war to me.
They threaten my family.

To gain the word

to describe the loss
I risk losing everything.
I may create a monster
the word’s length and body
swelling up colorful and thrilling
looming over my mother, characterized.
Her voice in the distance
unintelligible illiterate.
These are the monster’s words.2
—Cherríe Moraga

Who gave us permission to perform the act of writing? Why does

writing seem so unnatural for me? I’ll do anything to postpone it—empty
the trash, answer the telephone. The voice recurs in me: Who am I, a poor
Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write? How dare I even consider
becoming a writer as I stooped over the tomato fields bending, bending
under the hot sun, hands broadened and calloused, not fit to hold the quill,
numbed into an animal stupor by the heat.
How hard it is for us to think we can choose to become writers, much
less feel and believe that we can. What have we to contribute, to give? Our
own expectations condition us. Does not our class, our culture as well as the
white man tell us writing is not for women such as us?
The white man speaks: Perhaps if you scrape the dark off of your face.
Maybe if you bleach your bones. Stop speaking in tongues, stop writing left-
handed. Don’t cultivate your colored skins nor tongues of fire if you want to
make it in a right-handed world.

Man, like all the other animals, fears and is repelled by that which
he does not understand, and mere difference is apt to connote
something malign.3

I think, yes, perhaps if we go to the university. Perhaps if we become

male-women or as middle class as we can. Perhaps if we give up loving
women, we will be worthy of having something to say worth saying. They
convince us that we must cultivate art for art’s sake. Bow down to the
sacred bull, form. Put frames and metaframes around the writing. Achieve
distance in order to win the coveted title “literary writer” or “professional
writer.” Above all do not be simple, direct, nor immediate.
Why do they fight us? Because they think we are dangerous beasts?
Why are we dangerous beasts? Because we shake and often break the
white’s comfortable stereotypic images they have of us: the Black domestic,
the lumbering nanny with twelve babies sucking her tits, the slant-eyed
Chinese with her expert hand—“They know how to treat a man in bed”—
the flat-faced Chicana or Indian, passively lying on her back, being fucked
by the Man a la La Chingada.
The Third World woman revolts: We revoke, we erase your white male
imprint. When you come knocking on our doors with your rubber stamps to
brand our faces with DUMB, HYSTERICAL, PASSIVE PUTA, PERVERT,
when you come with your branding irons to burn MY PROPERTY on our
buttocks, we will vomit the guilt, self-denial and race-hatred you have
force-fed into us right back into your mouth. We are done being cushions
for your projected fears. We are tired of being your sacrificial lambs and
scapegoats.
I can write this and yet I realize that many of us women of color who
have strung degrees, credentials and published books around our necks like
pearls that we hang on to for dear life are in danger of contributing to the
invisibility of our sister-writers. “La Vendida,” the sell-out.
The danger of selling out one’s own ideologies. For the Third World
woman, who has, at best, one foot in the feminist literary world, the
temptation is great to adopt the current feeling-fads and theory fads, the
latest half truths in political thought, the half-digested new age
psychological axioms that are preached by the white feminist establishment.
Its followers are notorious for “adopting” women of color as their “cause”
while still expecting us to adapt to their expectations and their language.
How dare we get out of our colored faces. How dare we reveal the
human flesh underneath and bleed red blood like the white folks. It takes
tremendous energy and courage not to acquiesce, not to capitulate to a
definition of feminism that still renders most of us invisible. Even as I write
this I am disturbed that I am the only Third World woman writer in this
handbook [Words in Our Pockets]. Over and over I have found myself to be
the only Third World woman at readings, workshops, and meetings.
We cannot allow ourselves to be tokenized. We must make our own
writing and that of Third World women the first priority. We cannot educate
white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help, but
we can’t do the white woman’s homework for her. That’s an energy drain.
More times than she cares to remember, Nellie Wong, Asian American
feminist writer, has been called by white women wanting a list of Asian
American women who can give readings or workshops. We are in danger of
being reduced to purveyors of resource lists.
Coming face to face with one’s limitations. There are only so many
things I can do in one day. Luisah Teish addressing a group of
predominantly white feminist writers had this to say of Third World
women’s experience:

If you are not caught in the maze that (we) are in, it’s very
difficult to explain to you the hours in the day we do not have.
And the hours that we do not have are hours that are translated
into survival skills and money. And when one of those hours is
 taken away it means an hour not that we don’t have to lie back
and stare at the ceiling or an hour that we don’t have to talk to a
friend. For me it’s a loaf of bread.

Understand.
My family is poor.
Poor. I can’t afford
a new ribbon. The risk
of this one is enough
to keep me moving
through it, accountable.
The repetition like my mother’s
stories retold, each time
reveals more particulars
gains more familiarity.

You can’t get me in your car so fast.4

—Cherríe Moraga

Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage.5

—Naomi Littlebear Morena

Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this

complacency I fear. Because I have no choice. Because I must keep the
spirit of my revolt and myself alive. Because the world I create in the
writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I
put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life
does not appease my appetites and hunger. I write to record what others
erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me,
about you. To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover
myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To
dispel the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To
convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of
shit. To show that I can and that I will write, never mind their admonitions
to the contrary. And I will write about the unmentionables, never mind the
outraged gasp of the censor and the audience. Finally, I write because I’m
scared of writing but I’m more scared of not writing.
Why should I try to justify why I write? Do I need to justify being
Chicana, being woman? You might as well ask me to try to justify why I’m
alive.
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 of as “other”—the dark, the feminine. Didn’t we start writing to
reconcile this other within us? We knew we were different, set apart, exiled
from what is considered “normal,” white-right. And as we internalized this
exile, we came to see the alien within us and too often, as a result, we split
apart from ourselves and each other. Forever after we have been in search
of that self, that “other” and each other. And we return, in widening spirals
and never to the same childhood place where it happened, first in our
families, with our mothers, with our fathers. The writing is a tool for
piercing that mystery but it also shields us, gives a margin of distance, helps
us survive. And those that don’t survive? The waste of ourselves: so much
meat thrown at the feet of madness or fate or the state.

24 mayo 80
It is dark and damp and has been raining all day. I love days like this.
As I lie in bed I am able to delve inward. Perhaps today I will write from
that deep core. As I grope for words and a voice to speak of writing, I stare
at my brown hand clenching the pen and think of you thousands of miles
away clutching your pen. You are not alone.

Pen, I feel right at home in your ink doing a pirouette, stirring the
cobwebs, leaving my signature on the window panes. Pen, how
could I ever have feared you. You’re quite house-broken but it’s
your wildness I am in love with. I’ll have to get rid of you when
you start being predictable, when you stop chasing dustdevils.
The more you outwit me the more I love you. It’s when I’m tired
or have had too much caffeine or wine that you get past my
defenses and you say more than what I had intended. You surprise
me, shock me into knowing some part of me I’d kept secret even
from myself.
–Journal entry
 In the kitchen Maria and Cherríe’s voices falling on these pages. I can
see Cherríe going about in her terry cloth wrap, barefoot, washing the
dishes, shaking out the tablecloth, vacuuming. Deriving a certain pleasure
watching her perform those simple tasks, I am thinking they lied, there is no
separation between life and writing.
The danger in writing is not fusing our personal experience and world
view with the social reality we live in, with our inner life, our history, our
economics, and our vision. What validates us as human beings validates us
as writers. What matters to us is the relationships that are important to us
whether with our self or others. We must use what is important to us to get
to the writing. No topic is too trivial. The danger is in being too universal
and humanitarian and invoking the eternal to the sacrifice of the particular
and the feminine and the specific historical moment.
The problem is to focus, to concentrate. The body distracts, sabotages
with a hundred ruses, a cup of coffee, pencils to sharpen. The solution is to
anchor the body to a cigarette or some other ritual. And who has time or
energy to write after nurturing husband or lover, children and often an
outside job? The problems seem insurmountable and they are, but they
cease being insurmountable once we make up our mind that whether
married or childrened or working outside jobs we are going to make time
for the writing.
Forget the room of one’s own—write in the kitchen, lock yourself up
in the bathroom. Write on the bus or the welfare line, on the job or during
meals, between sleeping or waking. I write while sitting on the John. No
long stretches at the typewriter unless you’re wealthy or have a patron—
you may not even own a typewriter. While you wash the floor or clothes
listen to the words chanting in your body. When you’re depressed, angry,
hurt, when compassion and love possess you. When you cannot help but
write.
Distractions all—that I spring on myself when I’m so deep into the
writing when I’m almost at that place, that dark cellar where some “thing”
is liable to jump up and pounce on me. The ways I subvert the writing are
many. The way I don’t tap the well nor learn how to make the windmill
turn.
Eating is my main distraction. Getting up to eat an apple danish. That
I’ve been off sugar for three years is not a deterrent nor that I have to put on
a coat, find the keys and go out into the San Francisco fog to get it. Getting
up to light incense, to put a record on, to go for a walk—anything just to put
off the writing.
Returning after I’ve stuffed myself. Writing paragraphs on pieces of
paper, adding to the puzzle on the floor, to the confusion on my desk
making completion far away and perfection impossible.

26 mayo 80
Dear mujeres de color, I feel heavy and tired and there is a buzz in my
head—too many beers last night. But I must finish this letter. My bribe: to
take myself out to pizza.
So I cut and paste and line the floor with my bits of paper. My life
strewn on the floor in bits and pieces and I try to make some order out of it
—working against time, psyching myself up with decaffeinated coffee,
trying to fill in the gaps.
Leslie, my housemate, comes in gets on hands and knees to read my
fragments on the floor and says, “It’s good, Gloria.” And I think: I don’t
have to go back to Texas, to my family of land, mesquites, cactus,
rattlesnakes and roadrunners. My family, this community of writers. How
could I have lived and survived so long without it? And I remember the
isolation, re-live the pain again.
“To assess the damage is a dangerous act,”6 writes Cherríe Moraga. To
stop there is even more dangerous.
It’s too easy, blaming it all on the white man or white feminists or
society or on our parents. What we say and what we do ultimately comes
back to us, so let us own our responsibility, place it in our own hands and
carry it with dignity and strength. No one’s going to do my shitwork, I pick
up after myself.
It makes perfect sense to me now how I resisted the act of writing, the
commitment to writing. To write is to confront one’s demons, look them in
the face and live to write about them. Fear acts like a magnet; it draws the
demons out of the closet and into the ink in our pens.
The tiger riding our backs (writing) never lets us alone. Why aren’t you
riding, writing, writing? It asks constantly till we begin to feel we’re
vampires sucking the blood out of too fresh an experience; that we are
sucking life’s blood to feed the pen. Writing is the most daring thing that I
have ever done and the most dangerous. Nellie Wong calls writing “the
three-eyed demon shrieking the truth.”7
 Writing is dangerous because we are afraid of what the writing reveals:
the fears, the angers, the strengths of a woman under a triple or quadruple
oppression. Yet in that very act lies our survival because a woman who
writes has power. And a woman with power is feared.

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our

grandmother’s time? It is a question with an answer cruel enough
to stop the blood.8
—Alice Walker

I have never seen so much power in the ability to move and transform
others as from that of the writing of women of color.
In the San Francisco area, where I now live, none can stir the audience
with their craft and truthsaying as do Cherríe Moraga (Chicana), Genny
Lim (Asian American), and Luisah Teish (Black). With women like these,
the loneliness of writing and the sense of powerlessness can be dispelled.
We can walk among each other talking of our writing, reading to each other.
And more and more when I’m alone, though still in communion with each
other, the writing possesses me and propels me to leap into a timeless,
spaceless no-place where I forget myself and feel I am the universe. This is
power.
It’s not on paper that you create but in your innards, in the gut and out
of living tissue—organic writing I call it. A poem works for me not when it
says what I want it to say and not when it evokes what I want it to. It works
when the subject I started out with metamorphoses alchemically into a
different one, one that has been discovered, or uncovered, by the poem. It
works when it surprises me, when it says something I have repressed or
pretended not to know. The meaning and worth of my writing is measured
by how much I put myself on the line and how much nakedness I achieve.

Audre said we need to speak up. Speak loud, speak unsettling

things and be dangerous and just fuck, hell, let it out and let
everybody hear whether they want to or not.9
—Kathy Kendall
 I say mujer mágica, empty yourself. Shock yourself into new ways of
perceiving the world, shock your readers into the same. Stop the chatter
inside their heads.
Your skin must be sensitive enough for the lightest kiss and thick
enough to ward off the sneers. If you are going to spit in the eye of the
world, make sure your back is to the wind. Write of what most links us with
life, the sensation of the body, the images seen by the eye, the expansion of
the psyche in tranquility: moments of high intensity, its movement, sounds,
thoughts. Even though we go hungry we are not impoverished of
experiences.

I think many of us have been fooled by the mass media, by

society’s conditioning that our lives must be lived in great
explosions, by “falling in love,” by being “swept off our feet,”
and by the sorcery of magic genies that will fulfill our every wish,
our every childhood longing. Wishes, dreams, and fantasies are
important parts of our creative lives. They are the steps a writer
integrates into her craft. They are the spectrum of resources to
reach the truth, the heart of things, the immediacy and the impact
of human conflict.10
—Nellie Wong

Many have a way with words. They label themselves seers but they
will not see. Many have the gift of tongue but nothing to say. Do not listen
to them. Many who have words and tongue have no ear, they cannot listen
and they will not hear.
There is no need for words to fester in our minds. They germinate in
the open mouth of the barefoot child in the midst of restive crowds. They
wither in ivory towers and in college classrooms.
Throw away abstraction and the academic learning, the rules, the map
and compass. Feel your way without blinders. To touch more people, the
personal realities and the social must be evoked—not through rhetoric but
through blood and pus and sweat.
Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with
your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write
with your tongues of fire. Don’t let the pen banish you from yourself. Don’t
let the ink coagulate in your pens. Don’t let the censor snuff out the spark,
nor the gags muffle your voice. Put your shit on the paper.
We are not reconciled to the oppressors who whet their howl on our
grief. We are not reconciled.
Find the muse within you. The voice that lies buried under you, dig it
up. Do not fake it, try to sell it for a handclap or your name in print.
Love,
Gloria

Notes
1. Originally written for Words in Our Pockets (San Francisco: Bootlegger), The Feminist Writer’s
Guild Handbook.
2. Cherríe L. Moraga, poem “It’s the Poverty,” in Loving in the War Years (Boston: South End
Press, 1983), 62–63.
3. Alice Walker, ed., “What White Publishers Won’t Print,” I Love Myself When I Am Laughing—
A Zora Neal Hurston Reader (New York: Feminist Press, 1979), 169.
4. Moraga, “It’s the Poverty.”
5. Naomi Littlebear Morena, The Dark of the Moon, (Portland: Olive Press, 1977), 36.
6. Cherríe L. Moraga’s essay, “La Güera,” in this volume.
7. Nellie Wong, “Flows from the Dark of Monsters and Demons: Notes on Writing,” in Radical
Women Pamphlet (San Francisco, 1979).
8. Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the
South,” MS, May 1974, 60.
9. Letter from Kathy Kendall, March 10, 1980, concerning a writer’s workshop given by Audre
Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Meridel LeSeur.
10. Wong, “Flows from the Dark of Monsters and Demons,” 88.
Millicent Fredericks
Gabrielle Daniels

Millicent Fredericks is part of my anthology of forgotten Third World

women celebrated in poetry, A Woman Left Behind. She was Anais Nin’s
housemaid, and the quotes about her and on black people in general are the
original ones from Anais’ Diary.
Millicent has been on my mind since I first read the Diaries while
getting my B.A. (I am going for my Master’s now.) One day it just poured
out. I haven’t been able to find a publisher for her, because some people
will not touch it. Too much for them to take, I guess. Too damn bad. All our
saints have a few taints of sin …
Millicent Fredericks was a black woman from Antigua, who married
an American black man and had four children. He had a trade as a tailor
that he refused to implement after a while. Millicent was an alien, therefore
she could not teach school as she had in Antigua. The only way out was
housework. As far as I know she remained the sole support of her family.
As noted in the Diaries of Anais Nin, one son was shot up in a gang war.
Here were two women, one black and one white, both educated and
silenced in their own ways, yet could not help each other because of race
and class differences.
Anais could not get beyond the fact of Millicent’s blackness and
poverty and suffering. The stench of the patrona just reeks about her:

I would like to write the life of Millicent. But saint’s lives are
difficult to do … A Negro is a concept … Millicent
perhaps … becomes a symbol of what they have to endure … the
very first day she came to me sent by my mother and she sat
sewing, the thread rolled to the floor and I picked it up for
her … This gesture established the quality of our relationship … I
would like to devote my life to the recognition of the Negro’s
 equality, but I always feel ineffectual in political battles … one
can only win by force or trickery … she has fine features, which a
Gauguin would have enjoyed painting …
—from The Diary of Anais Nin

Only for the sake of art

Millicent, do you rise
tall from the ink
in the pupils you sought
dark and wide
taking you in like the letters
you would have performed
scratched indelibly on slated memories, chalk dust
gold on your fingers. A teacher.

From A to B
from Antigua to Harlem
is no giant step. Brown syrup
from the cane stills of home
stick like skin
adheres to the sharpened ribs of shanty girls
running careless like your husband from responsibility
catches white heat rubbing shoulders
on the New York trolley, the floors and windows
sucking the strength from your maid’s fingers
your teats dribbling the same tar sweetness on
to your smacking children the same curse.

Beyond introductions
the thread of your lives intersected,
ran from the tangled nest in the sewing basket.
The spools dared equality. Two aliens
two mothers well met, living on little thanks.
The pin money feebly spread out
for Dad and his drink, Patchen
a pair of shoes for the youngest, the press
Pressure. Glimpses in the lilt of clipped English
from both sides of the ocean:
Harlem clubs, black street gangs cutting up
a son, the broken families and the literati
dining on themselves
The mending to be done, the mending of words
the hunger knit in the growling guts of the mind
Publish, publish our cries.

You the ministrant

above the small white fact
which was but one seam
pinched in emergency in the creeping taxi
is your last conscious scene.

No curtain calls in the proceeding pages

in the wake of her saving move to California,
you continue
to rummage through days-old bread,
trickle down shops. The killing routine
she admired of you, and because of you
escaped to write, to cable Henry
ever the last sum. “The writer,” she said,
“must be served and taken care of,”
lessening the time
you could afford for breath
to clean your own home for Sunday meetin’

Perhaps to dust off your teacher’s diploma

with more care.

No islander, despite her praise

Gauguin could not have traced
the furrows in your face,
the buried seeds waiting in vain
for spotlight to flower
a smile, Madonna, smile please …
In your uniform
you were like everyone of them
at war to survive
and then like no other. I have learned
from such self-denial,
martyrs and saints are made
or forgotten.
In Search of the Self as Hero
Confetti of Voices on New Year’s Night—a Letter to Myself

Nellie Wong

You want to run away and hide now, become a breeze beneath a willow
tree, a breath from the dragon’s mouth, a blade of grass struggling skyward
to shoot above the ground, not to be squashed like an ant, not to be
forgotten perhaps like an Asian prostitute. These past few days now, that
have become years of memories and dreams, of work and struggle, of
becoming and living, you shiver in the fleece of your inkblue robe,
wondering why you tiptoe down the stairs to write, to face your typewriter
like a long, lost friend, welcoming her this New Year’s Night.
You don’t question the urgency to write, to express yourselves, your
innocence and naïveté, your conflicts and passions, your doubts and beliefs
as a woman, a writer, a feminist, a poet, an Asian American, a secretary, a
thlee yip nui, a wife, trying to learn the business of life: the act of loving.
You have come away from a weekend of workshops at the Modern
Language Association conference, absorbed the words and thoughts of
writers like yourselves, provoked by the hate and love directed at a book by
Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior: A Girlhood among Ghosts—
for you a book of brilliance, of love and anger, becoming an art form, a
testimony and vision of one Chinese American woman’s world.
Ah, but you ask, who determines Chinese American culture, Asian
American sensibility? These opponents to the art of Maxine Hong Kingston,
or to the confetti of voices fluttering from the past, voices still yet to be
heard, to be written down?
Who are you who has written a book of poems, who has stored away
over ten years of fiction, poems and prose? Who are you who describes
herself as an Asian American Feminist, who works and writes toward that
identity, that affinity, that necessary self-affirming love? And you ask
yourselves if you must retreat, scared rabbits, into the forests of your own
imagination, your own prisons and clearings, your entanglements of words
versus concepts, of dreams versus reality, of expression versus
interpretation, of language versus life, knowing in all your sensibilities as a
woman writer that you face the struggles head-on. You know there is no
retreat now, no avoiding the confrontations, the debates and disagreements
between what is art and what is not art which for you also means: what is
Asian American feminist art and politics?
If you sing too often of woe, yours or your sisters’, you may be
charged with being “too personal,” “too autobiographical,” too much a
woman who cries out, who acknowledges openly, shamelessly, the pain of
living and the joy of becoming free. You believe, almost too simply, that
you are establishing your own traditions, becoming your own role model,
becoming your own best friend, your own accessible hero. In so doing you
do not deny human relationships, but acknowledge them, want them and
fight for them. And you are angered by the arrogance of some articles that
would tell you that Virginia Woolf is your spiritual mother, your possible
role model, for the work you have to do: to write. And why are you angered
except for the fact that she was white and privileged, yet so ill that she
walked into the sea.
And now you have discovered Ding Ling, China’s most prolific
woman writer, a feminist, a communist, a loving, fighting woman, whose
stories gleam, bright lights in the dark of China’s past. Ding Ling,
imprisoned for expressing her anguish, her love and compassion for China’s
women, for recording the conditions of their lives. Ding Ling, attacked for
her feminism, supposedly bourgeois, individualistic, impeding the
movement of communism in her native land. Now there is information
trickling out that she is writing again, silenced for so many years. Now you
want to search for more of her work, jewels you want to hold in your own
hands. Now you want to share her work, to discover the links between the
women of China and the women of Chinese America, to find the
grandmothers you wish to adopt.
In your search you do not deny the writings of Hisaye Yamamoto, or
Wakako Yamauchi, Jade Snow Wong or Maxine Hong Kingston, Jessica
Hagedorn or Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. However, you deny these women as
role models because your experiences are not theirs. Their experiences are
not yours though you assimilate them because the range of human
experience tickles your solitariness, your desire to become pluralistic, a free
spirit soaring into the north and south poles of everywoman’s existence.
You respect these writers, your contemporaries, and yet you do not only
hear their voices simply because you must carve out your own destiny: a
woman hero, an adventurer, a doer, a singer, an actor, fearless with the
length of your own body, the depth of your dark seeing eyes, the sounds of
your typewriter keys. And you ask: where have you gone and what have
you done? You don’t have the time to count the poems, the stories, the
outpourings of grief and joy, but they are there in your file cabinet, they are
there in your mind, and they are there flowing through your bloodstream.
They are there as surely as you awaken each morning and shower and
shower, happy as a hummingbird, content to let the water fall over your
body, splash it and splash it, while you soap your ears and underarms, while
you shampoo your hair, while you have a few moments alone to let the
thoughts and impulses pour into song, rhythm, poems, life.
Could you have become a recluse, simply an observer of life, content
to roam by the sea, thinking and dreaming and stopping to eat only when
you had to? Could you have become a hobo, an alcoholic, a sleeping
princess, content to live through the deeds and accomplishments of others?
And what is this adventure, this hunger, that roars in you now, as a woman,
a writer, an Asian American, a feminist? And why? And what is this
satisfaction, this self-assuredness, of individuality, or spirit, of aloneness?
And finally, what is this thrust toward community, toward interaction with
women and men, this arrow toward creativity, toward freedom?
You have the support of friends and sister writers. You have the love of
your husband and your siblings, and yet you turn from them, run with this
force, this necessity, this light toward art, toward politics and writing. In the
doing and expressing, in the organizing, cutting and filing, in the hours you
spend in your study on a bright Sunday afternoon, you wonder why it seems
simple to remove yourselves from other people. You think you could have
become a minister or a nun, judging and commenting on philosophy, on
morality, on the complexities of human life, on the injustice of human
beings oppressing other human beings. You have no answers. You have
questions and more questions about violence against women, against
children, against ethnic minorities, against gays. You only understand that
you must try to answer your questions. 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.
 If you desire freedom, total freedom, you ask, does it mean that you
must die? You are unafraid, but you think of the dead, of the dying. Of
women like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, writers who killed themselves,
poets you’ve admired; of two Asian American teenaged sisters who
committed suicide because their father opposed their dating Hispanic boys.
You think of your cousin who hung himself in Las Vegas, his hearing gone,
his son alienated from him. You think of your father who died of cirrhosis
of the liver, who brought your mother and three sisters to America. You
think of your mother who died of stomach cancer, who desired her own fur
coat, her own grandson; and of Bok Gung, a cook, a gentle old man, a
pioneer, a grandfather, who died at home in his rented room above
Hamburger Joe’s in Oakland’s Chinatown. And is the question that of
mortality and how you desire to become immortal, and not be a fool, a real
human being? You a mortal, you a woman, who does not want to be small
in any sense of the word. You a poet, you a feminist, who seeks beauty in
and beyond the ordinariness of the everyday world.
You talk of children and yet you have none. You talk of writing and
leaving a part of yourselves to daughters and sons, their daughters and sons,
so they will discover for themselves the heart and minds of Asian
Americans, particularly the women who are struggling in this fight for
freedom. You don’t understand why you have this vision, of leaving work,
signs and clues, knowledge and art, stones, however rough or polished, for
people you will never know. You realize you will be gone when the
questions of the future arise like wildflowers on the plains of this earth. You
want to be a part of a legacy and so you write and write, questioning and
exploring, not knowing if what you write will become a part of America’s
freedom song, not knowing if there is a rainbow.
You believed once in your own passivity, your own powerlessness,
your own spiritual malaise. You are now awakening in the beginnings of a
new birth. Not born again, but born for the first time, triumphant and
resolute, out of experience and struggle, out of a flowing, living memory,
out of consciousness and will, facing, confronting, challenging head-on the
contradictions of your lives and the lives of people around you. You believe
now in the necessity and beauty of struggle: that feminism for you means
working for the equality and humanity of women and men, for children, for
the love that is possible.
 You rub your legs in this cold room. You shiver when you recall your
own self-pity when you had no date on New Year’s Eve, when you
regretted the family gathering because it reminded you that you stood out, a
woman without a man, a woman without children. Now you are
strengthened, encouraged by the range of your own experiences as a writer,
a feminist, an organizer, a secretary. Now you are fired by your own needs,
by the needs of your sisters and brothers in the social world, by your
journey toward solidarity against tyranny in the workplace, on the streets, in
our literature and in our homes. You are fueled by the clarity of your own
sight, heated by your own energy to assert yourselves as a human being, a
writer, a woman, an Asian American, a feminist, a clerical worker, a
student, a teacher, not in loneliness and isolation, but in a community of
freedom fighters. Your poems and stories will do some of the work for you,
but poems and stories alone aren’t enough. Nothing for you is ever enough
and so you challenge yourselves, again and again, to try something new, to
help build a movement, to organize for the rights of working people, to
write a novel, a play, to create a living theater that will embody your dreams
and vision, energy in print, on stage, at work that will assert the will of an
independent, freedom-loving woman, that will reflect a sensibility of Asian
America, of feminism, of sharing food and wealth with all the people, with
all your kin.
And you will not stop working and writing because you care, because
you refuse to give up, because you won’t submit to the forces that will
silence you, a cheong hay poa, a long steam woman, a talker, a dancer who
moves with lightning. And you are propelled by your sense of fair play, by
your respect for the dead and the living, by your thlee yip American
laughter and language, by your desire to help order the chaotic world that
you live in, knowing as the stars sparkle on this New Year’s night that you
will not survive the work that still needs to be done in the streets of Gold
Mountain.
Chicana’s Feminist Literature
A Re-vision through Malintzin/or Malintzin Putting Flesh Back
on the Object

Norma Alarcón

Malintzin (or La Malinche) was an Aztec noble woman who was presented
to Cortés upon landing in Veracruz in 1519. She subsequently served Cortés
as lover, translator and tactical advisor. She is a controversial figure in the
Conquest of Mexico. Her name is often called forth to reenact,
symbolically, the Conquest or any conquest. Part of this drama, analogically
so, is now being played out also in Aztlán.
Malintzin’s history, her legend and subsequent mythic dimensions as
evil goddess and creator of a new race—the mestizo race—embroils her in
a family quarrel, where many male members often prefer to see her as the
mother-whore, bearer of illegitimate children, responsible for the foreign
Spanish invasion; and where female members attempt to restore balance in
ways that are sometimes painfully ambivalent, and at other times attempt to
topple the traditional patriarchal mythology through revision and re-vision.1
This essay will explore the traditional image of Malintzin in Chicano
culture and will provide examples of the ways contemporary Chicana
feminist writers have reacted to and used this image in their work.
In our patriarchal mythological pantheon, there exists even now a
woman who was once real. Her historicity, her experience, her true flesh
and blood were discarded. A Kantian, dualistic male consciousness stole
her and placed her on the throne of evil, like Dante’s upside down frozen
Judas, doomed to moan and bemoan. The woman is interchangeably called
by three names: Malintzin, Malinche, Marina. Malintzin’s excruciating life
in bondage was of no account, and continues to be of no account. Her
almost half century of mythic existence, until recent times mostly in the oral
traditions, had turned her into a handy reference point not only for
controlling, interpreting or visualizing women, but also to wage a domestic
battle of stifling proportions.
Unlike Eve whose primeval reality is not historically documentable
and who supposedly existed in some past edenic time, Malintzin’s betrayal
of our supposed pre-Columbian paradise is recent and hence almost
palpable. This almost-within-reach past heightens romantic nostalgia; and
as a consequence, hatred for Malintzin and women becomes as vitriolic as
the American Puritans’ loathing of witches-women.
The focus of the betrayal is not a lofty challenge to a “god” who
subsequently unleashed evil upon the world as punishment. Disobedience to
a “god” might place the discussion at times on an ideal plane and relieve
tension momentarily as one switches from an intense dialogue about one’s
body to a “rarified” field at least in terms of the vocabulary used. However,
the male myth of Malintzin is made to see betrayal first of all in her very
sexuality, which makes it nearly impossible at any given moment to go
beyond the vagina as the supreme site of evil until proven innocent by way
of virginity or virtue, the most pawnable commodities around.2
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. An enslavement which is subsequently manifested in
self-hatred. All we see is hatred of women. We must hate her too since love
seems only possible through extreme virtue whose definition is at best
slippery.
The poet Alma Villanueva must have realized, understood the
insidiousness of the hate syndrome. Her whole book Bloodroots is a song to
the rejection of self-loathing. The poem “I sing to myself” states:

I could weep and rage

against the man who never
stroked my fine child hair
who never felt the pride of
my femininity …3

It is not just the father that is a source of pain; a mother figure appears
also. The mother is impotent to help the daughter. All of her energies seem
directed, spent in her desire and need for man, a factor that repulses and
attracts the daughter. Love for mother is an ambivalence rooted in the
daughter’s sense of abandonment by her mother and her apparently
enormous and irrational need:

Never finding a breast to rest

and warm myself …4

As the daughter proceeds to repeat her mother’s experience, she

ironically discovers and affirms a “mounting self/love” as a combative force
against the repetition of the mother’s abnegation, and irrational need of and
dependency on men. Self-love as a tool of survival, however, leads the male
lover to reject her. Her conclusion leaves no doubt as to what woman may
be forced to do:

I/woman give birth:

and this time to
myself5

The sexual abuse experienced leaves the daughter no choice but to be

her own mother, to provide her own supportive, nurturing base for the
physical and psychic survival. To escape the cycle of loathing and self-
loathing, Villanueva’s woman has no alternative, even though she would
have wanted more options, but to first love the self and then proceed to
regenerate and nurture it by becoming her own mother. She is forced to
transform the self into both mother and daughter and rejects the male flesh
which at this point in time “is putrid and bitter.” He must be transfigured.
The end effect could be seen as narcissistic, a perennial accusation
directed at woman’s literature. Yet, if it be narcissistic, never has a motive
force for it been revealed so tellingly and clearly, never have the possible
roots been exposed so well: starvation for self-reflection in the other: man
or woman.
The male myth of Malintzin, in its ambivalent distaste and fear of the
so-called “enigmatic feminine,” echoes in this poem as it does in many
Mexican/Chicana’s poems, even when her name is not mentioned. The
pervasiveness of the myth is unfathomable, often permeating and suffusing
our very being without conscious awareness.
 The myth contains the following sexual possibilities: woman is
sexually passive, and hence at all times open to potential use by men
whether it be seduction or rape. The possible use is double-edged: That is,
the use of her as pawn may be intracultural, “amongst us guys,” or
intercultural, which means if we are not using her then “they” must be using
her. Since woman is seen as highly pawnable, nothing she does is perceived
as a choice. Because Malintzin aided Cortés in the Conquest of the New
World, she is seen as concretizing woman’s sexual weakness and
interchangeability, always open to sexual exploitation. Indeed, as long as
we continue to be seen in that way we are earmarked to be abusable matter,
not just by men of another culture, but all cultures including the one that
breeds us.
Lorna Dee Cervantes addresses herself to the latter point in her poem
“Baby you cramp my style.” In the poem Malintzin is mentioned by her
other name: Malinche. The poet is asked to bestow her sexual favors; the
lover’s tone implies that her body/self is as available as the mythic
Malinche is thought to be by male consciousness:

You cramp my style, baby

when you roll on top of me
shouting, “Viva La Raza!”
at the top of your prick.
…
Come on Malinche
Gimme some more!6

He cramps her style; she refuses sexual exploitation for herself and her
daughters yet to come, in a way Malintzin could not do because of the
constraints of the slave society into which she was born.
The Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos reminds us in “Malinche”7 that
Malintzin was sold into slavery by complicitous parents to enhance her
brother’s inheritance. The mother eager to please her new husband agrees to
sell her daughter, and therefore enchains her destiny. Castellanos speculates,
in the poem, that this is the result of the mother’s own self-loathing. A
mother who cannot bear to see herself reflected in her daughter’s
mirror/sexuality prefers to shatter the image/mirror, negate the daughter and
thereby perpetuate rejection and negation.
 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a brilliant chronicler of the Conquest with a
great eye for detail, reveals to us that when Malintzin re-encounters her
mother and brother years later and during the very process of the Conquest,
she is merely polite. It seems that Malintzin, instead of offering them
protection within the folds of the victorious, leaves them to their own
devices for survival in an embattled country. In a way she condemns them
to servitude just as she had been condemned. Why is there no forgiveness?
Within what context can we analyze Malintzin’s behavior at this point? We
have a reversal, the daughter negates the mother.
Within the complex mother-daughter relationship, the mother keeps
bearing quite a bit of the responsibility for the daughter’s emotional
starvation, abandonment or enslavement and yet paradoxically both are
subordinate and subjected to a male culture and tradition. Perhaps our
sexual identification with our mothers leads us to expect greater
understanding from her as well a psychic/sexual protection. Villanueva tells
us it is a false expectation—mothers are powerless, looking to satisfy their
own hunger through men, which is agonizing for the daughter: “her pain
haunted me for years.”8
Simone Weil suggests that the conscious slave is much superior, and I
would add that a woman who is conscious of being perceived as pawn is
much superior. I doubt that the historical Malintzin was a truly conscious
slave. In her ambiance slavery was a cultural norm, it was not unusual for
men or women to be royalty one day and slave, vanquished or sacrificial
victim the next. It was a norm within which she had to seek
accommodation. It is also quite possible that what is seen as Malintzin’s
allegiance to Cortés—hence purposeful betrayal of “her people”—may be
explained by Weil’s perception of the slave–master relationship. She says,
“… the thought of being in absolute subjection as somebody’s plaything is a
thought no human being can sustain: so if a man (I add woman) is left with
no means at all of escaping constraint he (she) has no alternative except to
persuade himself (herself) that he (she) is doing voluntarily the very things
he (she) is forced to do; in other words, he (she) substitutes devotion for
obedience … devotion of this kind rests upon self-deception, because the
reasons for it will not bear inspection.”9
In our religiously permeated and oriented indo-hispanic minds, it is
often the case that devotion is equated with obedience and vice versa,
particularly for women and children, so that disobedience is seen as a lack
of devout allegiance, and not necessarily as a radical questioning of our
forms of life. This factor makes it almost impossible to sense a shift from
obedience to devotion; they have been one and the same for hundreds of
years. As such, we are a greater unconscious prey to subjugation which we
then proceed to call devotion/love. To be obedient/devoted is proof of love,
especially for women and children.
Consciously and unconsciously the Mexican/Chicano patriarchal
perspective assigns the role of servitude to woman particularly as
heterosexual relationships are conceived today and in the past. In an “Open
Letter to Carolina … or Relations between Men and Women” the Chicano
poet Abelardo Delgado testifies as follows: “Octavio Paz in El Laberinto de
la Soledad10 has much to say as to how we as Chicanos see our
women … For now let it suffice to say that as far as our wives and mothers
we make saints of them but remain always in search of a lover with macho
characteristics (sic).”11 Obviously when the wife or would-be-wife, the
mother or would-be-mother questions out loud and in print the complex
“servitude/devotion/love,” she will be quickly seen as false to her
“obligation” and duty, hence a traitor. Delgado also points to the creation of
a different category of women—macho-lover—who will provide comforts
beyond those that fall within the purview of wives and mothers. What is a
macho/lover kind of woman?
Delgado goes on to tell Carolina that “All it takes is a simple refusal
on the part of women to be abused by us men.” However, he cautions about
the manner in which it is done, “You must show them all that your mind is
on par or above theirs. You must be careful that you do this with some
grace, dignity and humility … Men might accept your challenges a few
times and let it go but if our ego happens to be wounded, then watch out,
Carolina, because what follows is a cold rejection and a new assigned role
as a feme-macho.”12 (Will this new role of a “feme-macho” then provide
the macho/lovers that are sought above and beyond the wife and mother?)
It seems that what is wanted here is for all women to be a kind of Sor
Juana,13 which leaves out the majority of us who are not fortunate enough
to be a woman of genius. But because we know Sor Juana’s dreadful fate as
a result of her intellectual endeavors, we also know that genius is hardly
enough. Even a genius needs a political base, a constituency. Since many
Mexican/Chicana poets’ challenges are straightforward, not humble, I
shudder to think at our marginalization; how are we being shunned?
 When our subjection is manifested through devotion we are saints and
escape direct insult. When we are disobedient, hence undevout, we are
equated with Malintzin; that is, the myth of male consciousness, not the
historical figure in all her dimensions doomed to live in chains (regardless
of which patriarchy might have seemed the best option for survival).
Carmen Tafolla’s poem “La Malinche”14 makes it quite clear that
Malintzin as woman is dispossessed of herself by every male ideology with
which she was connected. Tafolla would simply like to see Malintzin
recognized as a visionary and founder of a people. Yet as I have noted, the
realities that this figure encompasses are much too complex to simply
replace them with the notion of a matriarch. However, each implicit or
explicit poem on Malintzin emphasizes the pervasive preoccupation and
influence of the myth and women’s need to demythify.
The mythic aspects of disavowal, and the historical ambiance of
Malintzin merge in Chicanas’ literature to bring out the following sexual
political themes: 1) to choose among extant patriarchies is not a choice at
all; 2) woman’s abandonment and orphanhood and psychic/emotional
starvation occur even in the midst of tangible family; 3) woman is a slave,
emotionally as well as economically; 4) women are seen not just by one
patriarchy but by all as rapeable and sexually exploitable; 5) blind devotion
is not a feasible human choice (this is further clarified by the telling absence
of poems by women to the Virgin of Guadalupe, while poems by men to her
are plentiful); 6) when there is love/devotion it is at best deeply ambivalent
as exemplified by Rina Rocha in “To the penetrator”:

I hate the love

I feel for you.15

Feminist women agree with Hegel, despite his relentless use of man as
universal, that the subject depends on external reality. If she is to be fully at
home this external reality must reflect back to her what she actually is or
would want to be. 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”:
 I speak but only in an illusion
For I see and I don’t

It’s me and It’s not

I hear and I don’t

These illusions belong to me

I stole them from another

Care to spend a day in my House of Death?

Look at my garden … are U amazed?

No trees, no flowers, no grass … no gardens …

I love and I don’t

I hate and I don’t
I sing and I don’t
I live and I don’t

For I’m in a room of clouded smoke

And a perfumed odor

Nowhere can I go and break these bonds

Which have me in an illusion

But the bonds are real.16

Feminism is a way of saying that nothing in patriarchy truly reflects

women unless we accept distortions—mythic and historical. However, as
Chicanas embrace feminism they are charged with betrayal a la Malinche.
Often great pains are taken to explain that our feminism assumes a
humanistic nuance. The charge remains as a clear image imprinted on
Chicanas (and I believe most Third World women, in this country or outside
of it) by men. It continues to urge us to make quantum leaps towards a male
ideologized humanism devoid of female consciousness. The lure of an ideal
humanism is seductive, especially for spiritual women such as we have
often been brought up to be; but without female consciousness and
envisioning how as women we would like to exist in the material world, to
leap into humanism without repossessing ourselves may be exchanging one
male ideology for another.
As women we are and continue to be tokens everywhere at the present
moment. Everywhere in a Third World context, women invited to partake in
the feast of modeling humanism can be counted among the few; and those
few may be enjoying what Adrienne Rich calls “a false power which
masculine society offers to a few women who ‘think like men’ on condition
that they use it to maintain things as they are. This is the meaning of female
tokenism: that power withheld from the vast majority of women is offered
to the few.”17
Even as we concern ourselves with Third World women’s economic
exploitation, we have to concern ourselves with psychosexual exploitation
and pawnability at the hands of one’s brother, father, employer, master,
political systems and sometimes, sadly so, powerless mothers. As world
politics continue the histrionics of dominance and control attempting to
figure out just who indeed will be the better macho in the world map,
macho politics’ last priority is the quality of our lives as women or the lives
of our children.

Notes
1. Insofar as feminine symbolic figures are concerned, much of the Mexican/Chicano oral tradition
as well as the intellectual are dominated by La Malinche/Llorona and the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The former is a subversive feminine symbol which often is identified with La Llorona, the latter
a feminine symbol of transcendence and salvation. The Mexican/Chicano cultural tradition has
tended to polarize the lives of women through these national (and nationalistic) symbols thereby
exercising almost sole authority over the control, interpretation and visualization of women.
Although the material on both figures is vast, the following serve as guides to past and present
visions and elucidations: Eric Wolf, “The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol,”
Journal of American Folklore 71 (1958): 34–39; Américo Paredes, “Mexican Legendry and the
Rise of the Mestizo: A Survey,” in American Folk Legend, edited by Wayland D. Hand
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 97–107; Richard M. Dorson’s foreword to
Folktales of Mexico, edited by Américo Paredes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970),
esp. xvi–xxxvii; and Octavio Paz, “The Songs of La Malinche,” in The Labryinth of Solitude,
translated by Lysander Kemp (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 65–88. Paz takes the traditional
male perspective of woman as enigma and mystery and then proceeds to disclose the culture’s
(men’s) mentality vis-à-vis these figures. Women in their assigned roles as transmitters of the
culture have often adhered to these views, however, they have not created them.
2. Bertrand Russell in Marriage and Morals affirms that the conception of female virtues has been
built up in order to make the patriarchal family as we have known it possible.
3. Alma Villanueva, “I sing to myself,” in Third Chicano Literary Prize: Irvine 1976–77 (Irvine,
CA: Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Irvine, 1977), 99–101.
4. Ibid., 100.
5. Ibid., 101.
6. El Fuego de Aztlán 1, no. 4 (Summer 1977): 39.
7. Poesía no eres tú (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1972), 295–297.
8. Villanueva, op. cit., 99.
9. Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks, translated by Richard Rees (London: Oxford University
Press, 1970), 41.
10. See note 1 for my commentary on this text.
11. Revista Chicano-Riqueña 6, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 35.
12. Ibid., 38.
13. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is a famous poet-nun of the Mexican Colonial Period. A highly
creative and intellectual woman, she was forced by the church to abandon her writing after
penning a treatise that challenged a prelate’s notions on the nature of Love and Christ.
14. Canto al Pueblo: An Anthology of Experience (San Antonio, Texas: Penca Books, 1978), 38–39.
15. Revista Chicano-Riqueña 3, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 5.
16. De Colores 2, no. 1 (Winter 1973): 52.
17. “On Priviledge, Power and Tokenism,” MS, September 1979, 43.
Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading
Chrystos

This is a give-away poem

You have come gathering
You have made a circle with me
of the places where I have wandered
I want to give you the first daffodil opening from the earth I have sown
to give you warm loaves of bread
baked in soft mounds like breasts
In this circle I pass each of you a shell from our mother sea
Hold it in your spirit & hear the stories she will tell you
I have wrapped your faces around me, a warm robe
Let me give you ribbonwork leggings, dresses sewn with elk teeth
moccasins woven with red & sky blue porcupine quills
I give you blankets woven of flowers & roots
Come closer
I have more to give this basket is very large
I have stitched it of your kind words
Here is a necklace of feathers & bones
a sacred meal of choke cherries
Take this mask of bark which keeps out the evil ones
This basket is only the beginning
There is something in my arms for all of you
I offer you
this memory of sunrise seen through ice crystals
Here, an afternoon of looking into the sea from high rocks
Here, a red-tailed hawk circling over our heads
One of its feathers drops for your hair
May I give you this round stone which holds an ancient spirit
This stone will soothe you
Within this basket is something you have been looking for
all of your life
Come take it
Take as much as you want
I give you seeds of a new way
I give you the moon shining on a fire of singing women
I give you the sound of our feet dancing
I give you the sound of our thoughts flying
I give you the sound of peace
moving into your faces & sitting down
Come
this is a give away poem
I cannot go home
until you have taken everything
and the basket which held it

When my hands are empty

I will be full
 VI

El Mundo Zurdo
The Vision
Liliana Wilson, Los desaparecidos en el cielo (The Disappeared in Heaven), 1977
Pencil on paper, 7″ × 5″
Collection of Cynthia Pérez
El Mundo Zurdo
The Vision

Coming into spirituality the way I did changed the christian myth that there is nothing we
can do—we are totally powerless. I found out that when there was trouble, my people did
not say “o.k., we can’t fight, we just have to let god handle it.” They went and made
sacrifices, they evoked their gods and goddesses, they became possessed, and they went out
there and they fought. You learn to take power when there is a presence behind you.
—Luisah Teish

We, the women here, take a trip back into the self, travel to the deep core of
our roots to discover and reclaim our colored souls, our rituals, our religion.
We reach a spirituality that has been hidden in the hearts of oppressed
people under layers of centuries of traditional god-worship. It emerges from
under the veils of La Virgen de Guadalupe and unrolls from Yemaya’s
ocean waves whenever we need to be uplifted from or need the courage to
face the tribulations of a racist patriarchal world where there is no relief.
Our spirituality does not come from outside ourselves. It emerges when we
listen to the “small still voice” (Teish) within us which can empower us to
create actual change in the world.
The vision of our spirituality provides us with no trap door solution, no
escape hatch tempting us to “transcend” our struggle. 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.
As Third World women, we are especially vulnerable to the many-
headed demon of oppression. We are the women on the bottom. Few
oppressions pass over us. To work toward the freedom of our own skin and
souls would, as Combahee states, “… mean that everyone else would have
to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all
systems of oppression.” The love we have for our common maligned bodies
and souls must burgeon out in lucha, in struggle. As Teish points out, we
must work toward diminishing the possibility of being locked up in a
padded cell, of being battered or raped. Our feelings of craziness and
powerlessness that Combahee speaks of are induced by the shit society
dumps on us rather than stemming from being born ugly or evil as the
patriarchal shrinks would have us believe. We must not believe the story
they tell about us. We must recognize the effects that our external
circumstances of sex, class, race and sexuality have on our perception of
ourselves—even in our most private unspoken moments.
The vision of radical Third World Feminism necessitates our
willingness to work with those people who would feel at home in El Mundo
Zurdo, the left-handed world: the colored, the queer, the poor, the female,
the physically challenged. From our blood and spirit connections with these
groups, we women on the bottom throughout the world can form an
international feminism. For separatism by race, nation, or gender will not
do the trick of revolution. Autonomy, however, is not separatism. We
recognize the right and necessity of colonized peoples throughout the
world, including Third World women in the US, forming independent
movements toward self-government. But ultimately, we must struggle
together. Together we form a vision that spans from the self-love of our
colored skins, to the respect of our foremothers who kept the embers of
revolution burning, to our reverence for the trees—the final reminder of our
rightful place on this planet.
The change evoked on these pages is material as well as psychic.
Change requires a lot of heat. It requires both the alchemist and the welder,
the magician and the laborer, the witch and the warrior, the myth-smasher
and the myth-maker.
Hand in Hand, we brew and forge a revolution.
Give Me Back
Chrystos

that anger bone mal mama

that rattle painted red, painted fresh blood, slaughtered enemy
hung with strong feathers, guts of vipers
I’ll knock down this old long house this weary war horse
these dry rituals called
how are you
I want that brown thigh bone
carved with eagle beak
that club dig it out of the dirt

mal mama spirit stole my bones put them in her burying jug
sealed me up in wax & ashes
I crack out
arrange my bones in their naming places
I take what I want
shaking my sacred hair dancing out taboo
I mark out the space I am
with knives
La Prieta
Gloria Anzaldúa

When I was born, Mamágrande Locha inspected my buttocks looking for

the dark blotch, the sign of indio, or worse, of mulatto blood. My
grandmother (Spanish, part German, the hint of royalty lying just beneath
the surface of her fair skin, blue eyes and the coils of her once blond hair)
would brag that her family was one of the first to settle in the range country
of south Texas.
Too bad mi’jita was morena, muy prieta, so dark and different from her
own fair-skinned children. But she loved mi’jita anyway. What I lacked in
whiteness, I had in smartness. But it was too bad I was dark like an Indian.
“Don’t go out in the sun,” my mother would tell me when I wanted to
play outside. “If you get any darker, they’ll mistake you for an Indian. And
don’t get dirt on your clothes. You don’t want people to say you’re a dirty
Mexican.” It never dawned on her that, though sixth-generation American,
we were still Mexican and that all Mexicans are part Indian. I passed my
adolescence combatting her incessant orders to bathe my body, scrub the
floors and cupboards, clean the windows and the walls.
And as we’d get into the back of the “patrón’s” truck that would take
us to the fields, she’d ask, “Where’s your gorra (sunbonnet)?” La gorra—
rim held firm by slats of cardboard, neck flounce flowing over my
shoulders—made me feel like a horse with blinders, a member of the
French Foreign Legion, or a nun bowed down by her wimple.
One day in the middle of the cotton field, I threw the gorra away and
donned a sombrero. Though it didn’t keep out the Texas 110° sun as well as
the bonnet, I could now see in all directions, feel the breeze, dry the sweat
on my neck.
When I began writing this essay, nearly two years ago, the wind I was
accustomed to suddenly turned into a hurricane. It opened the door to the
old images that haunt me, the old ghosts and all the old wounds. Each
image a sword that cuts through me, each word a test. Terrified, I shelved
the rough draft of this essay for a year.
I was terrified because in this writing I must be hard on people of color
who are the oppressed victims. I am still afraid because I will have to call
us on a lot of shit like our own racism, our fear of women and sexuality.
One of my biggest fears is that of betraying myself, of consuming myself
with self-castigation, of not being able to unseat the guilt that has ridden on
my back for years.

These my two hands

quick to slap my face
before others could slap it1

But above all, I am terrified of making my mother the villain in my life

rather than showing how she has been a victim. Will I be betraying her in
this essay for her early disloyalty to me?
With terror as my companion, I dip into my life and begin work on
myself. Where did it begin, the pain, the images that haunt me?

Images That Haunt Me

When I was three months old tiny pink spots began appearing on my diaper.
“She’s a throwback to the Eskimo,” the doctor told my mother. “Eskimo
girl children get their periods early.” At seven I had budding breasts. My
mother would wrap them in tight cotton girdles so the kids at school would
not think them strange beside their own flat brown mole nipples. My
mother would pin onto my panties a folded piece of rag. “Keep your legs
shut, Prieta.” This, the deep dark secret between us, her punishment for
having fucked before the wedding ceremony, my punishment for being
born. And when she got mad at me she would yell, “He batallado más
contigo que con todos los demás y no lo agradeces!” (I’ve taken more care
with you than I have with all the others and you’re not even grateful.) My
sister started suspecting our secret—that there was something “wrong” with
me. How much can you hide from a sister you’ve slept with in the same bed
since infancy?
What my mother wanted in return for having birthed me and for
nurturing me was that I submit to her without rebellion. Was this a survival
skill she was trying to teach me? She objected not so much to my
disobedience but to my questioning her right to demand obedience from
me. Mixed with this power struggle was her guilt at having borne a child
who was marked “con la seña,” thinking she had made me a victim of her
sin. In her eyes and in the eyes of others I saw myself reflected as “strange,”
“abnormal,” “QUEER.” I saw no other reflection. Helpless to change that
image, I retreated into books and solitude and kept away from others.
The whole time growing up I felt that I was not of this earth. An alien
from another planet—I’d been dropped on my mother’s lap. But for what
purpose?
One day when I was about seven or eight, my father dropped on my
lap a 25¢ pocket western, the only type of book he could pick up at a
drugstore. The act of reading forever changed me. In the westerns I read,
the house servants, the villains and the cantineras (prostitutes) were all
Mexicans. But I knew that the first cowboys (vaqueros) were Mexicans,
that in Texas we outnumbered the Anglos, that my grandmother’s ranch
lands had been ripped off by the greedy Anglo. Yet in the pages of these
books, the Mexican and Indian were vermin. The racism I would later
recognize in my school teachers and never be able to ignore again I found
in that first western I read.
My father dying, his aorta bursting while he was driving, the truck
turning over, his body thrown out, the truck falling on his face. Blood on
the pavement. His death occurred just as I entered puberty. It irrevocably
shattered the myth that there existed a male figure to look after me. How
could my strong, good, beautiful godlike father be killed? How stupid and
careless of God. What if chance and circumstance and accident ruled? I lost
my father, God, and my innocence all in one bloody blow.
Every 24 days, raging fevers cooked my brain. Full flowing periods
accompanied cramps, tonsillitis, and 105° fevers. Every month a trip to the
doctors. “It’s all in your head,” they would say. “When you get older and
get married and have children the pain will stop.” A monotonous litany
from the men in white all through my teens.
The bloodshed on the highway had robbed my adolescence from me
like the blood on my diaper had robbed childhood from me. And into my
hands unknowingly I took the transformation of my own being.
 Nobody’s going to save you.
No one’s going to cut you down
cut the thorns around you.
No one’s going to storm
the castle walls nor
kiss awake your birth,
climb down your hair,
nor mount you
onto the white steed.

There is no one who

will feed the yearning.
Face it. You will have
to do, do it yourself.2

My father dead, my mother and I turned to each other. Hadn’t we

grown together? We were like sisters—she was 16 when she gave birth to
me.
Though she loved me she would only show it covertly—in the tone of
her voice, in a look. Not so with my brothers—there it was visible for all
the world to see. They were male and surrogate husbands, legitimate
receivers of her power. Her allegiance was and is to her male children, not
to the female.
Seeing my mother turn to my brothers for protection, for guidance—a
mock act. She and I both knew she wouldn’t be getting any from them. Like
most men they didn’t have it to give, instead needed to get it from women. I
resented the fact that it was OK for my brothers to touch and kiss and flirt
with her, but not for my sister and me. Resenting the fact that physical
intimacy between women was taboo, dirty.
Yet she could not discount me. “Machona—india ladina” (masculine—
wild Indian), she would call me because I did not act like a nice little
Chicanita is supposed to act: later, in the same breath she would praise and
blame me, often for the same thing—being a tomboy and wearing boots,
being unafraid of snakes or knives, showing my contempt for women’s
roles, leaving home to go to college, not settling down and getting married,
being a política, siding with the Farmworkers. Yet, while she would try to
correct my more aggressive moods, my mother was secretly proud of my
“waywardness.” (Something she will never admit.) Proud that I’d worked
myself through school. Secretly proud of my paintings, of my writing,
though all the while complaining because I made no money out of it.

Vergüenza (Shame)

… being afraid that my friends would see my momma, would know that she
was loud—her voice penetrated every corner. Always when we came into a
room everyone looked up. I didn’t want my friends to hear her brag about
her children. I was afraid she would blurt out some secret, would criticize
me in public. She always embarrassed me by telling everyone that I liked to
lie in bed reading and wouldn’t help her with the housework.
… eating at school out of sacks, hiding our “lonches” papas con
chorizo behind cupped hands and bowed heads, gobbling them up before
the other kids could see. Guilt lay folded in the tortilla. The Anglo kids
laughing—calling us “tortilleros,” the Mexican kids taking up the word and
using it as a club with which to hit each other. My brothers, sister and I
started bringing white bread sandwiches to school. After a while we
stopped taking our lunch altogether.
There is no beauty in poverty, in my mother being able to give only
one of her children lunch money. (We all agreed it should go to Nune, he
was growing fast and was always hungry.) It was not very romantic for my
sister and me to wear the dresses and panties my mother made us out of
flour sacks because she couldn’t afford store-bought ones like the other
mothers.
Well, I’m not ashamed of you anymore, Momma.

My heart, once bent and cracked, once

ashamed of your China ways.
Ma, hear me now, tell me your story
again and again.
—Nellie Wong, “From a Heart of Rice Straw,”
Dreams of Harrison Railroad Park

It was not my mother’s fault that we were poor and yet so much of my
pain and shame has been with our both betraying each other. But my mother
has always been there for me in spite of our differences and emotional
gulfs. She has never stopped fighting; she is a survivor. Even now I can
hear her arguing with my father over how to raise us, insisting that all
decisions be made by both of them. I can hear her crying over the body of
my dead father. She was 28, had had little schooling, was unskilled, yet her
strength was greater than most men’s, raising us single-handed.
After my father died, I worked in the fields every weekend and every
summer, even when I was a student in college. (We only migrated once
when I was seven, journeyed in the back of my father’s red truck with two
other families to the cotton fields of west Texas. When I missed a few
weeks of school, my father decided this should not happen again.)
… the planes swooping down on us, the fifty or a hundred of us falling
onto the ground, the cloud of insecticide lacerating our eyes, clogging our
nostrils. Nor did the corporate farm owners care that there were no toilets in
the wide open fields, no bushes to hide behind.
Over the years, the confines of farm and ranch life began to chafe. The
traditional role of la mujer was a saddle I did not want to wear. The
concepts “passive” and “dutiful” raked my skin like spurs, and “marriage”
and “children” set me to bucking faster than rattlesnakes or coyotes. I took
to wearing boots and men’s jeans and walking about with my head full of
visions, hungry for more words and more words. Slowly I unbowed my
head, refused my state and began to challenge the way things were. But it’s
taken over thirty years to unlearn the belief instilled in me that white is
better than brown—something that some people of color never will unlearn.
And it is only now that the hatred of myself, which I spent the greater part
of my adolescence cultivating, is turning to love.

La Muerte, the Frozen Snow Queen

I dig a grave, bury my first love, a German Shepherd. Bury the second,
third, and fourth dog. The last one retching in the backyard, going into
convulsions from insecticide poisoning. I buried him beside the others, five
mounds in a row crowned with crosses I’d fashioned from twigs.
No more pets, no more loves—I court death now.
… Two years ago on a fine November day in Yosemite Park, I fall on
the floor with cramps, severe chills and shaking that go into spasms and
near convulsions, then fevers so high my eyes feel like eggs frying. Twelve
hours of this. I tell everyone, “It’s nothing, don’t worry, I’m alright.” The
first four gynecologists advise a hysterectomy. The fifth, a woman, says
wait.
… Last March my fibroids conspired with an intestinal tract infection
and spawned watermelons in my uterus. The doctor played with his knife.
La Chingada ripped open, raped with the white man’s wand. My soul in one
corner of the hospital ceiling, getting thinner and thinner, telling me to clean
up my shit, to release the fears and garbage from the past that are hanging
me up. So I take La Muerte’s scythe and cut away my arrogance and pride,
the emotional depressions I indulge in, the head trips I do on myself and
other people. With her scythe I cut the umbilical cord shackling me to the
past and to friends and attitudes that drag me down. Strip away—all the
way to the bone. Make myself utterly vulnerable.
… I can’t sleep nights. The mugger said he would come and get me.
There was a break in the county jail and I just know he is broken out and is
coming to get me because I picked up a big rock and chased him, because I
got help and caught him. How dare he drag me over rocks and twigs, the
skin on my knees peeling, how dare he lay his hands on my throat, how
dare he try to choke me to death, how dare he try to push me off the bridge
to splatter my blood and bones on the rocks 20 feet below. His breath on my
face, our eyes only inches apart, our bodies rolling on the ground in an
embrace so intimate we could have been mistaken for lovers.
That night terror found me curled up in my bed. I couldn’t stop
trembling. For months terror came to me at night and never left me. And
even now, seven years later, when I’m out in the street after dark and I hear
running footsteps behind me, terror finds me again and again.
No more pets, no more loves.
… one of my lovers saying I was frigid when he couldn’t bring me to
orgasm.
… bringing home my Peruvian boyfriend and my mother saying she
did not want her “Prieta” to have a “mojado” (wetback) for a lover.
… my mother and brothers calling me puta when I told them I had lost
my virginity and that I’d done it on purpose. My mother and brothers
calling me jota (queer) when I told them my friends were gay men and
lesbians.
… Randy saying, “It’s time you stopped being a nun, an ice queen
afraid of living.” But I did not want to be a snow queen regal with icy
smiles and fingernails that ripped her prey ruthlessly. And yet, I knew my
being distant, remote, a mountain sleeping under the snow, is what attracted
him.

A woman lies buried under me,

interred for centuries, presumed dead.

A woman lies buried under me.

I hear her soft whisper
the rasp of her parchment skin
fighting the folds of her shroud.
Her eyes are pierced by needles
her eyelids, two fluttering moths.3

I am always surprised by the image that my white and non-Chicano

friends have of me, surprised at how much they do not know me, at how I
do not allow them to know me. They have substituted the negative picture
the white culture has painted of my race with a highly romanticized,
idealized image. “You’re strong,” my friends said, “a mountain of strength.”
Though the power may be real, the mythic qualities attached to it keep
others from dealing with me as a person and rob me of my being able to act
out my other selves. Having this “power” doesn’t exempt me from being
prey in the streets nor does it make my scrambling to survive, to feed
myself, easier. To cope with hurt and control my fears, I grew a thick skin.
Oh, the many names of power—pride, arrogance, control. I am not the
frozen snow queen but a flesh and blood woman with perhaps too loving a
heart, one easily hurt.
I’m not invincible, I tell you. My skin’s as fragile as a baby’s. I’m
brittle bones and human, I tell you. I’m a broken arm.
You’re a razor’s edge, you tell me. Shock them shitless. Be the
holocaust. Be the black Kali. Spit in their eye and never cry. Oh broken
angel, throw away your cast, mend your wing. Be not a rock but a razor’s
edge and burn with falling (Journal Entry, Summer Solstice, 1978).

Who Are My People?

I am a wind-swayed bridge, a crossroads inhabited by whirlwinds. Gloria

the facilitator, Gloria the mediator, straddling the walls between abysses.
“Your allegiance is to La Raza, the Chicano movement,” say the members
of my race. “Your allegiance is to the Third World,” say my Black and
Asian friends. “Your allegiance is to your gender, to women,” say the
feminists. Then there’s my allegiance to the Gay movement, to the socialist
revolution, to the New Age, to magic and the occult. And there’s my
affinity to literature, to the world of the artist. What am I? A third world
lesbian feminist with Marxist and mystic leanings. They would chop me up
into little fragments and tag each piece with a label.
You say my name is ambivalence? Think of me as Shiva, a many-
armed and legged body with one foot on brown soil, one on white, one in
straight society, one in the gay world, the man’s world, the women’s, one
limb in the literary world, another in the working class, the socialist, and the
occult worlds. A sort of spider woman hanging by one thin strand of web.
Who, me confused? Ambivalent? Not so. Only your labels split me.
Years ago, a roommate of mine fighting for gay rights told MAYO, a
Chicano organization, that she and the president were gay. They were
ostracized. When they left, MAYO fell apart. They too, being forced to
choose between the priorities of race, sexual preference, or gender.
In the streets of this gay mecca, San Francisco, a Black man at a bus
stop yells, “Hey Faggots, come suck my cock.” Randy yells back, “You
goddamn nigger, I worked in the Civil Rights movement ten years so you
could call me names.” Guilt gagging in his throat with the word,
nigger. … a white woman waiting for the J-Church streetcar sees Randy and
David kissing and says, “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Two grown
men—disgusting.”
… Randy and David running into the house. The hair on the back of
my neck rises, something in their voices triggers fear in me. Three Latino
men in a car had chased them as they were walking home from work. “Gay
boys, faggots,” they yelled throwing a beer bottle. Getting out of their car,
knife blades reflect the full moon. … Randy and David hitting each other in
the hall. Thuds on the wall—the heavy animal sounds.
… Randy pounding on my door one corner of his mouth bleeding, his
glasses broken, blind without them, he crying, “I’m going to kill him, I’m
going to kill the son of a bitch.”
The violence against us, the violence within us, aroused like a rabid
dog. Adrenaline-filled bodies, we bring home the anger and the violence we
meet on the street and turn it against each other. We sic the rabid dog on
each other and on ourselves. The black moods of alienation descend, the
bridges we’ve extended out to each other crumble. We put the walls back up
between us.
Once again it’s faggot-hunting and queer-baiting time in the city. “And
on your first anniversary of loving each other,” I say to Randy, “and they
had to be Latinos,” feeling guilt when I look at David. Who is my brother’s
keeper, I wonder—knowing I have to be, we all have to be. We are all
responsible. But who exactly are my people?
I identify as a woman. Whatever insults women insults me.
I identify as gay. Whoever insults gays insults me.
I identify as feminist. Whoever slurs feminism slurs me.
That which is insulted I take as part of me, but there is something too
simple about this kind of thinking. Part of the dialectic is missing. What
about what I do not identify as?
I have been terrified of writing this essay because I will have to own
up to the fact that I do not exclude whites from the list of people I love, two
of them happen to be gay males. For the politically correct stance we let
color, class, and gender separate us from those who would be kindred
spirits. So the walls grow higher, the gulfs between us wider, the silences
more profound. There is an enormous contradiction in being a bridge.

Dance to the Beat of Radical Colored Chic

This task—to be a bridge, to be a fucking crossroads for goddess’ sake.

During my stint in the Feminist Writers’ Guild many white members
would ask me why Third World women do not come to FWG meetings and
readings. I should have answered, “Because their skins are not as thick as
mine, because their fear of encountering racism is greater than mine. They
don’t enjoy being put down, ignored, not engaged in equal dialogue, being
tokens. And, neither do I.” Oh, I know, women of color are hot right now
and hip. Our afro-rhythms and latin salsas, the beat of our drums is in.
White women flock to our parties, dance to the beat of radical colored chic.
They come to our readings, take up our cause. I have no objections to this.
What I mind is the pseudo-liberal ones who suffer from the white women’s
burden. Like the monkey in the Sufi story, who upon seeing a fish in the
water rushes to rescue it from drowning by carrying it up into the branches
of a tree. She takes a missionary role. She attempts to talk for us—what a
presumption! This act is a rape of our tongue and our acquiescence is a
complicity to that rape. We women of color have to stop being modern
medusas—throats cut, silenced into a mere hissing.

Where Do We Hang the Blame?

The pull between what is and what should be.

Does the root of the sickness lie within ourselves or within our
patriarchal institutions? Did our institutions birth and propagate themselves
and are we merely their pawns? Do ideas originate in human minds or do
they exist in a “no-osphere,” a limbo space where ideas originate without
our help? Where do we hang the blame for the sickness we see around us—
around our own heads or around the throat of “capitalism,” “socialism,”
“men,” “white culture”?
If we do not create these institutions, we certainly perpetuate them
through our inadvertent support. What lessons do we learn from the
mugger?
Certainly racism is not just a white phenomenon. Whites are the top
dogs and they shit on the rest of us every day of our lives. But casting
stones is not the solution. Do we hand the oppressor thug the rocks he
throws at us? How often do we people of color place our necks on the
chopping block? What are the ways we hold out our wrists to be shackled?
Do we gag our own mouths with our “dios lo manda” resignation? How
many times before the cock crows do we deny ourselves, shake off our
dreams, and trample them into the sand? How many times do we fail to help
one another up from the bottom of the stairs? How many times have we let
someone else carry our crosses? How still do we stand to be crucified?
It is difficult for me to break free of the Chicano cultural bias into
which I was born and raised, and the cultural bias of the Anglo culture that I
was brainwashed into adopting. It is easier to repeat the racial patterns and
attitudes, especially those of fear and prejudice, that we have inherited than
to resist them.
Like a favorite old shoe that no longer fits we do not let go of our
comfortable old selves so that the new self can be worn. We fear our power,
fear our feminine selves, fear the strong woman within, especially the black
Kali aspect, dark and awesome. Thus we pay homage not to the power
inside us but to the power outside us, masculine power, external power.
 I see 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. I cannot discount the role I play
as accomplice, that we all play as accomplices, for we are not screaming
loud enough in protest.
The disease of powerlessness thrives in my body, not just out there in
society. And just as the use of gloves, masks, and disinfectants fails to kill
this disease, government grants, equal rights opportunity programs, welfare,
and foodstamps fail to uproot racism, sexism, and homophobia. And
tokenism is not the answer. Sharing the pie is not going to work. I had a bite
of it once and it almost poisoned me. With mutations of the virus such as
these, one cannot isolate the virus and treat it. The whole organism is
poisoned.
I stand behind whatever threatens our oppression. I stand behind
whatever breaks us out of our bonds, short of killing and maiming. I stand
with whatever and whoever breaks us out of our limited views and awakens
our atrophied potentials.
How to turn away from the hellish journey that the disease has put me
through, the alchemical nights of the soul. Torn limb from limb, knifed,
mugged, beaten. My tongue (Spanish) ripped from my mouth, left
voiceless. My name stolen from me. My bowels fucked with a surgeon’s
knife, uterus and ovaries pitched into the trash. Castrated. Set apart from my
own kind, isolated. My life-blood sucked out of me by my role as woman
nurturer—the last form of cannibalism.

El Mundo Zurdo (the Left-Handed World)4

The pull between what is and what should be. I believe that by changing
ourselves we change the world, that traveling El Mundo Zurdo path is the
path of a two-way movement—a going deep into the self and an expanding
out into the world, a simultaneous recreation of the self and a reconstruction
of society. And yet, I am confused as to how to accomplish this.
I can’t discount the fact of the thousands that go to bed hungry every
night. The thousands that do numbing shitwork eight hours a day each day
of their lives. The thousands that get beaten and killed every day. The
millions of women who have been burned at the stake, the millions who
have been raped. Where is the justice to this?
 I can’t reconcile the sight of a battered child with the belief that we
choose what happens to us, that we create our own world. I cannot resolve
this in myself. I don’t know. I can only speculate, try to integrate the
experiences that I’ve had or have been witness to and try to make some
sense of why we do violence to each other. In short, I’m trying to create a
religion not out there somewhere, but in my gut. I am trying to make peace
between what has happened to me, what the world is, and what it should be.
“Growing up I felt that I was an alien from another planet dropped on
my mother’s lap. But for what purpose?”
The mixture of bloods and affinities, rather than confusing or
unbalancing me, has forced me to achieve a kind of equilibrium. Both
cultures deny me a place in their universe. Between them and among
others, I build my own universe, El Mundo Zurdo. I belong to myself and
not to any one people.
I walk the tightrope with ease and grace. I span abysses. Blindfolded in
the blue air. The sword between my thighs, the blade warm with my flesh. I
walk the rope—an acrobat in equipoise, expert at the Balancing Act.
The rational, the patriarchal, and the heterosexual have held sway and
legal tender for too long. Third World women, lesbians, feminists, and
feminist-oriented men of all colors are banding and bonding together to
right that balance. Only together can we be a force. I see us as a network of
kindred spirits, a kind of family.
We are the queer groups, the people that don’t belong anywhere, not in
the dominant world nor completely within our own respective cultures.
Combined we cover so many oppressions. But the overwhelming
oppression is the collective fact that we do not fit, and because we do not fit
we are a threat. Not all of us have the same oppressions, but we empathize
and identify with each other’s oppressions. We do not have the same
ideology, nor do we derive similar solutions. Some of us are leftists, some
of us practitioners of magic. Some of us are both. But these different
affinities are not opposed to each other. In El Mundo Zurdo I with my own
affinities and my people with theirs can live together and transform the
planet.5

Notes
1. From my poem “The Woman Who Lived Forever.” All subsequent unacknowledged poems will
be from my own writings.
2. From “Letting Go.” Now published in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San
Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2nd edition, 1999), 186–188. (Editor, 2015)
3. From “A Woman Lies Buried under Me.”
4. This section consists of notes “Towards a Construction of El Mundo Zurdo,” an essay in
progress.
5. Much of Gloria Anzaldúa’s unpublished writings can be found in her archives: The Gloria
Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers, located at the Nettie Lee Benson Library, Latin American
Collection at the University of Texas, Austin.
A Black Feminist Statement
Combahee River Collective1

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together

since 1974.2 During that time we have been involved in the process of
defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political
work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive
organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at
the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling
against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our
particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based
upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The
synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black
women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat
the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.
We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) the
genesis of contemporary Black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the
specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing Black
feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) Black
feminist issues and practice.

1. The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism

Before looking at the recent development of Black feminism we would like

to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American
women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation.
Black women’s extremely negative relationship to the American political
system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our
membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes. As Angela Davis
points out in “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of
Slaves,” Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical
manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively
resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and
subtle ways. There have always been Black women activists—some known,
like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells
Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown
—who had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with
their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their
political struggles unique. Contemporary Black feminism is the outgrowth
of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our
mothers and sisters.
A Black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection
with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in the
late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been
involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside
reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have
served to obscure our participation. In 1973 Black feminists, primarily
located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate Black feminist
group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).
Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements
for Black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of us
were active in those movements (civil rights, Black nationalism, the Black
Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their
ideology, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our
experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well
as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to
develop a politic that was antiracist, unlike those of white women, and
antisexist, unlike those of Black and white men.
There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black feminism; that
is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal
experiences of individual Black women’s lives. Black feminists and many
more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all
experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day
existence. As children we realized that we were different from boys and that
we were treated differently. For example, we were told in the same breath to
be quiet both for the sake of being “ladylike” and to make us less
objectionable in the eyes of white people. As we grew older we became
aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men. However, we had
no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent to us, what we knew was
really happening.
Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before
becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and
most importantly, feminism—the political analysis and practice that we
women use to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics
and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and
still does not allow most Black women, to look more deeply into our own
experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a
politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression. Our
development must also be tied to the contemporary economic and political
position of Black people. The post World War II generation of Black youth
was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and
employment options, previously closed completely to Black people.
Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American
capitalistic economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as
a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable
us to more effectively fight our oppression.
A combined antiracist and antisexist position drew us together initially,
and as we developed politically we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and
economic oppression under capitalism.

2. What We Believe

Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black
women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an
adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for
autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic, but it is
apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever considered
our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously for the ending of
that oppression. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attributed to
Black women (e.g., mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bulldagger), let
alone cataloguing the cruel, often murderous, treatment we receive,
indicates how little value has been placed upon our lives during four
centuries of bondage in the Western hemisphere. We realize that the only
people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation is
us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our
community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.
This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of
identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially the most
radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to
working to end somebody else’s oppression. In the case of Black women
this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore
revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political
movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation
than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces
behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.
We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in
Black women’s lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find
it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our
lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is
such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor
solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a
weapon of political repression.
Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with
progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white
women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people
necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white
women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their
negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black
men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.
We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the
destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism
as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe the work must be
organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the
products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be
equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not
convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist
and antiracist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at
the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that
takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are
generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of
us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and
professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons
who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and
sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic
lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it
applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know
that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our
specific economic situation as Black women.
A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the
expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. In our
consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone
beyond white women’s revelations because we are dealing with the
implications of race and class as well as sex. Even our Black women’s style
of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have experienced has
a resonance that is both cultural and political. We have spent a great deal of
energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression
out of necessity because none of these matters has ever been looked at
before. No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of Black
women’s lives. An example of this kind of revelation/conceptualization
occurred at a meeting as we discussed the ways in which our early
intellectual interests had been attacked by our peers, particularly Black
males. We discovered that all of us, because we were “smart,” had also been
considered “ugly,” i.e., “smart-ugly.” “Smart-ugly” crystallized the way in
which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to
our “social” lives. The sanctions in the Black and white communities
against Black women thinkers are comparatively much higher than for
white women, particularly ones from the educated middle and upper
classes.
As we have already stated, we reject the stance of lesbian separatism
because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out
far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and
children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have
been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and
how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their
maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what
they are. As Black women we find any type of biological determinism a
particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic.
We must also question whether lesbian separatism is an adequate and
progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it,
since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of women’s
oppression, negating the facts of class and race.

3. Problems in Organizing Black Feminists

During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have

experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. We have
found that it is very difficult to organize around Black feminist issues,
difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are Black feminists.
We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly
since the white women’s movement continues to be strong and to grow in
many directions. In this section we will discuss some of the general reasons
for the organizing problems we face and also talk specifically about the
stages in organizing our own collective.
The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not
just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to
address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual,
heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the
minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess any one of
these types of privilege have.
The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this
presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can
never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon Black
women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. As an early
group member once said, “We are all damaged people merely by virtue of
being Black women.” We are dispossessed psychologically and on every
other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change the condition
of all Black women. In “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,”
Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion:

We exist as women who are Black who are feminists, each

stranded for the moment, working independently because there is
not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our
struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do
what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world.3
 Wallace is pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of Black
feminists’ position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation
most of us face. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make
a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would
mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would
necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.
Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of Black
people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions
about our existence, i.e., that sex should be a determinant of power
relationships. Here is the way male and female voices were defined in a
Black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s:

We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is

the head of the house. He is the leader of the house/nation
because his knowledge of the world is broader, his awareness is
greater, his understanding is fuller and his application of this
information is wiser … After all, it is only reasonable that the
man be the head of the house because he is able to defend and
protect the development of his home … Women cannot do the
same things as men—they are made by nature to function
differently. Equality of men and women is something that cannot
happen even in the abstract world. Men are not equal to other
men, i.e., ability, experience or even understanding. The value of
men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silver—
they are not equal but both have great value. We must realize that
men and women are a complement to each other because there is
no house/family without a man and his wife. Both are essential to
the development of any life.4

The material conditions of most Black women would hardly lead them
to upset both economic and sexual arrangements that seem to represent
some stability in their lives. Many Black women have a good understanding
of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of
their lives cannot risk struggling against them both.
The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative.
They are, of course, even more threatened than Black women by the
possibility that Black feminists might organize around our own needs. They
realize that they might not only lose valuable and hard-working allies in
their struggles but that they might also be forced to change their habitually
sexist ways of interacting with and oppressing Black women. Accusations
that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful deterrents to
the growth of an autonomous Black women’s movement.
Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the
three-year existence of our group. And every Black woman who came, did
so out of a strongly-felt need for some level of possibility that did not
previously exist in her life.
When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first
eastern regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing, or
even a focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of months
of not meeting, we began to meet again late in the year and started doing an
intense variety of consciousness-raising. The overwhelming feeling we had
was that after years and years we had finally found each other. Although we
were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their
involvement in lesbian politics, sterilization abuse and abortion rights work,
Third World Women’s International Women’s Day activities, and support
activity for the trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inéz García.
During our first summer, when membership had dropped off considerably,
those of us remaining devoted serious discussion to the possibility of
opening a refuge for battered women in a Black community. (There was no
refuge in Boston at that time.) We also decided around that time to become
an independent collective since we had serious disagreements with NBFO’s
bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear political focus.
We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom
we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to
attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. One
of our members did attend and despite the narrowness of the ideology that
was promoted at that particular conference, we became more aware of the
need for us to understand our own economic situation and to make our own
economic analysis.
In the fall, when some members returned, we experienced several
months of comparative inactivity and internal disagreements which were
first conceptualized as a lesbian-straight split but which were also the result
of class and political differences. During the summer those of us who were
still meeting had determined the need to do political work and to move
beyond consciousness-raising and serving exclusively as an emotional
support group. At the beginning of 1976, when some of the women who
had not wanted to do political work and who also had voiced disagreements
stopped attending of their own accord, we again looked for a focus. We
decided at that time, with the addition of new members, to become a study
group. We had always shared our reading with each other, and some of us
had written papers on Black feminism for group discussion a few months
before this decision was made. We began functioning as a study group and
also began discussing the possibility of starting a Black feminist
publication. We had a retreat in the late spring which provided a time for
both political discussion and working out interpersonal issues. Currently we
are planning to gather together a collection of Black feminist writing. We
feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to
other Black women and believe that we can do this through writing and
distributing our work. The fact that individual Black feminists are living in
isolation all over the country, that our own numbers are small, and that we
have some skills in writing, printing, and publishing makes us want to carry
out these kinds of projects as a means of organizing Black feminists as we
continue to do political work in coalition with other groups.

4. Black Feminist Issues and Projects

During our time together we have identified and worked on many issues of
particular relevance to Black women. The inclusiveness of our politics
makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of
women, Third World, and working people. We are of course particularly
committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex and class are
simultaneous factors in oppression. We might, for example, become
involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World
women or picket a hospital that is cutting back on already inadequate health
care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center in a Black
neighborhood. Organizing around welfare and daycare concerns might also
be a focus. The work to be done and the countless issues that this work
represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression.
Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on
are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape and health
care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on Black
feminism on college campuses, at women’s conferences, and most recently
for high school girls.
One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to
publicly address is racism in the white women’s movement. As Black
feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort
white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which
requires among other things that they have a more than superficial
comprehension of race, color, and black history and culture. Eliminating
racism in the white women’s movement is by definition work for white
women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability
on this issue.
In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always
justifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done
in the name of achieving “correct” political goals. As feminists we do not
want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective
process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group
and in our vision of a revolutionary society. We are committed to a
continual examination of our politics, as they develop through criticism and
self-criticism, as an essential aspect of our practice. In her introduction to
Sisterhood Is Powerful Robin Morgan writes:

I haven’t the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role

white heterosexual men could fulfill, since they are the very
embodiment of reactionary-vested-interest-power.

As Black feminists and lesbians we know that we have a very definite

revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and
struggle before us.

Notes
1. The Combahee River Collective is a Black feminist group in Boston whose name comes from
the guerilla action conceptualized and led by Harriet Tubman on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal
region of South Carolina. This action freed more than 750 slaves and is the only military
campaign in American history planned and led by a woman.
2. This statement is dated April, 1977.
3. Michele Wallace, “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,” Village Voice, (July 28, 1975), 6–
7.
4. Mumininas of Committee for Unified Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The Nationalist
Woman), Newark, NJ, 1971, 4–5. From Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist
Feminism, edited by Zillah Eisenstein (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978).
The Welder
Cherríe Moraga

I am a welder.
Not an alchemist.
I am interested in the blend
of common elements to make
a common thing.

No magic here.
Only the heat of my desire to fuse
what I already know
exists. Is possible.

We plead to each other,

we all come from the same rock
we all come from the same rock
ignoring the fact that we bend
at different temperatures
that each of us is malleable
up to a point.

Yes, fusion is possible

but only if things get hot enough—
all else is temporary adhesion,
patching up.

It is the intimacy of steel melting

into steel, the fire of our individual
passion to take hold of ourselves
that makes sculpture of our lives,
builds buildings.
And I am not talking about skyscrapers,
merely structures that can support us
without fear
of trembling.

For too long a time

the heat of my heavy hands
has been smoldering
in the pockets of other
people’s business—
they need oxygen to make fire.

I am now
coming up for air.
Yes, I am
picking up the torch.

I am the welder.
I understand the capacity of heat
to change the shape of things.
I am suited to work
within the realm of sparks
out of control.

I am the welder.
I am taking the power
into my own hands.
O.K. Momma, Who the Hell Am I?
An Interview with Luisah Teish

Gloria Anzaldúa

Part One: “There was this rumbling in the background …”

G: Teish, in Numerology you can derive what your mission or life path is by
adding the day of your birth, the month and the year and reducing it to a
single digit number. The number corresponds with a Tarot card. According
to this system you are a 19-10 and 1, the “genius.” What do you see as your
task in this life and how did you find that out?

T: I’ve had a series of experiences that point the way. It’s as if I was given a
road map, and started traveling at different points. There is a travel
consultant that meets me and says okay, now you go this way. The big
vision, which I call my reformation, happened in Fall 1974. I was in a
terrible situation. I was coming out of having been deeply steeped in the
Black Power movement. I had spent since 1970 quite a bit of time trying to
ignore feminist teachings. There was this rumbling in the background
saying that women ought to consider the position of women. I’m here
screaming at the top of my lungs that Black people have to be free, you see.
And over here I’m hearing people saying women have to be free too; there’s
a certain kind of oppression women suffer. But because it was primarily
white women in the movement and white women who were vocalizing at
the time, for a while I went along with the idea that, well, what they’re
talking about is only relevant to white women. At the same time, in my
personal life I was being mistreated by people who claim to be about the
fight for freedom. That contradiction was staring me in my face. My inner
self was telling me, “You have marched, you have demonstrated, and you
have fought for freedom, and Malcolm said ‘freedom by any means
necessary.’ ”
And yet I’m taking certain kinds of crap off of my brothers, you know.
Why doesn’t this apply clean across the board? And it put me in a position
where I felt literally crippled. I felt like I had nowhere to turn and nothing
really to do. Other things that had happened in my life—I was broke,
underemployed, pregnant. I had had a child that died, went through a whole
number of things and came to the position that if I didn’t have the right to
fight to create a world that I could live in, if I could not have the right to
fight absolutely everybody for the kind of world that I could live in—then I
wouldn’t live. I wouldn’t live in a world where I would have to pretend to
be inferior so that some man would look superior. I wouldn’t live where
somebody got a better break than me only because their skin was lighter.
But at the same time I didn’t feel that I had enough power to really
fight it. So I became suicidal. At the time I was taking Valium at the
suggestion of a gynecologist who had a terrible reputation. You go in with a
vaginal infection and they give you Valium, you know what I mean? And
I’m on these Valiums and I’m saying I’m not going to live this kind of life,
and I look around and I decided that I’m going to leave here. I lay down to
die and my soul raised up out of my chest and sits up on the ceiling. She has
a long debate with me about why am I trying to check out of here. And I tell
her why I’m trying to check out and she says “no, no, no, no, you are going
to live and you are going to fight, and I’m going to show you what you are
going to do.”
I lay there and here comes this parade of visions. Sometimes it was
pictures, sometimes it was words—bold white letters traced in black. And
she was telling me to go fight. Essentially, she was telling me to fight for
my right to be a free woman. She was telling me to fight for my right to
create beauty in the way that I see it. You know, when you’re in the theatre
there’s always a struggle with people’s art being junk and Hollywood and
Broadway being the place to get to. She made it clear for me that my work
had to have substance. There’s no sense in me trying to play Miss Cupie
Doll; I’m not one of the June Taylor dancers. I am the person who is going
to work with the folk movement. Part of my assignment is legitimizing,
bringing to life, the value of folk knowledge. And so I see myself using my
art for the rest of my life, using my art to illuminate the culture of the
common people.
 Just about everything that I have done since 1973 has been the
outgrowth of this spiritual prompting. Once I accepted my role—that I am
an important person with a purpose—I have listened to that still small voice
and she says things to me. You must always confront that which you fear.
You gain strength by that, you see. And there’s a bit of magic here.
I went through a period of time when I seriously thought I was going
to lose my mind. That was because I was accepting, not what my goddess
said my role was, but what other people said my role ought to be. Putting on
false clothes. She said take them off. And there I was naked and I said,
“O.K., Momma, who the hell am I?” You know? And she says, “You’re a
person who has been afraid of going crazy. You should do something about
that.” So the natural thing you must do is—that anything you want to be
spared of, you must work toward diminishing the possibility of it happening
to you. And if it can happen to somebody else, it can happen to you, you
know. So I can’t afford to just walk around worried that I individually am
going to be locked up for no reason. I have to make sure that nobody can be
locked up for no reason. You have to eliminate the fear not only in yourself
but the real basis for that fear.
So consequently, my work with the battered women shelters and my
work with rape are basically an attempt to protect myself. It’s about my
own survival instinct and understanding that my destiny is infinitely tied
with that of everybody else. You know there’s a reason why we’re here
together on this same planet at this point in time.

Part Two: “I see the reemergence of the women’s movement as the

manifestations of the desires of the goddess energy.”

T: The thing that I’m feeling very intuitively about is that something
important is going on at this point in time, not only in my life but in the
lives of women in general and in the life of writing. There are times when I
look at what human history has been and I say, oh, okay, there have always
been people like us who get a momentum started and then it dies down and
nothing becomes of it. And it’s a hundred years or so before those thoughts
are resurrected. But there’s a little voice in my ears that insists that I
continue. It insists that something really important is happening here,
something that is going to have an effect here for years. Something that is
going to make a significant change in the world.
G: Sí, I see it in terms of the left-handed world coming into being. For
centuries now, ever since the industrial age or maybe even before, it has
always been a world of the intellect, reasoning, the machine. Here women
were stuck with having tremendous powers of intuition experiencing other
levels of reality and other realities yet they had to sit on it because men
would say, well, you’re crazy. All of a sudden there’s a reemergence of the
intuitive energies—and they are very powerful. And if you apply them in
your life on the personal and political plane then that gives you a
tremendous amount of energy—it’s almost like a volcano erupting. We have
yet to learn how to control that power. And we’re scared of it.

T: I think too that it’s part of the balance that always goes on in nature. It’s
like technology, which is purely masculine, material, and all about
aggressive-conquering power, has taken itself to the point of sleeping on the
self-destruct button and now it’s as if the mother goddess is coming in and
saying, “Wait a minute son, hold it boy. Now there are other things; there is
life. I’ve allowed you to play with your death machines long enough. Now
be quiet, cool down, I have to clean the situation up.” And I definitely see
the reemergence of the women’s movement as the manifestations of the
desires of the goddess energy.

G: What part does feminist spirituality have in taking back our own power?

T: It is slowly doing a lot. Feminist spirituality had a real problem because

most revolutionary circles have considered spirituality a no-no area.
Because the male god and the institutionalized church has been so
counterrevolutionary, there has been the temptation to say that there is
nothing but the material world, and this is all we should deal with. Okay?
So slowly but surely the people who are in tune with both the need for
revolution and understanding of the spiritual world are beginning to say,
“Hey, these worlds are not diametrically opposed to each other. Look, these
two can work together.” But now we are tapping our powers in self-defense.
We are using our power in self-defense. For example if you look in Z.
Budapest’s book The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, you will see a
charm for how to combat a racist. We use our spiritual power now to
understand that this man does not have the right to overpower me, and
because I know that this is right, I’m calling on that force to stand up to
him. When we reclaim women’s blood we increase our power.
Every time a sister learns that she is not born to live in a world of fear,
to be dominated, every time a sister sits down with a glass of water in front
of her and understands that she is intimately tied to water and that all life is
tied to water, she is gradually building an inner strength that gives her
armor to go out and fight the world.
For centuries we heard woman is no good, we have been beat down,
we have been made lethal, we have had to recycle our strength in other
ways. But now, because we have a spiritual understanding that this myth is
bull, we have the nerve to test our strength. In testing it we will find out
what it is, how much of it we have, and how much we can do with it. See,
we’re coming out of the shadow.
We have to use our strength to break the chain. And there are concrete,
very very concrete things we can do. Like I teach a lot of wealth charms
because a lot of women who come to my workshops are working-class
women who have no money, you know. So yes, we do a lot of charms to
pull money out of the rich and have it rechanneled into our hands. We do a
lot of healing on each other so I can keep my sister out of the hands of that
nice “happy” man over there. It’s very small, but we have to recapture what
is going to keep us alive. Because we have to keep alive.
If you take medicine for example, the man is always putting down
herbal remedies because they’re too available to everybody. Because if you
find out you can heal yourself on your own, without him, he’s out of the
job. So you’ve got to come to him to give him a chance to run his
Frankenstein experiments on you, you see. It’s like that Indian proverb that
if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach the man to fish he
eats forever. They’re into “Here, here little momma, big daddy’s gonna do
this for you, take a crumb here (snap), take a crumb there.” And I’m saying,
I’m the one that baked the bread, baby. You can’t do that no more.

G: You have spoken many times about the different charms you use for
healing. Would you give an example of each one of those?

T: Sure. It’s really good that you asked because right now I’m putting
together notes for a book that I want to do on women’s spirituality1 that
would be a combination of my own personal experiences and certain
historical information, but mostly a book of charms. When I came into this I
would not give anybody a charm that I had not experimented with myself.
That’s something you don’t get from your local doctor. He uses a rat and
then transposes it to a human.
Two charms that I think are especially important to women are those
involving water and those involving earth. Fire and light are important, but
water and earth charms seem to work very very fast. It’s interesting that
most of my charms require cooperation from one other person.
Let us say that we have a situation where we have two women who
find themselves in dire, dire poverty, you know. We can put the principle of
water to work in a charm called “pouring the money.” That is, you know
that you are going to run out of money soon, you know what’s coming.
Each day, for seven days, you come into your house and you take whatever
small change you have, and you put it into a bowl. Preferably you should
have two bowls, a white bowl and a green bowl. And then with the new
moon, especially a new moon in an earth sign or a water sign is best, you sit
down with the money you’ve saved, you sit down with a candle, green or
white, and you take something that is the symbol of wealth for you.
Sometimes I use one of the cards from the Tarot deck, other times I will use
a dollar bill, other times I will use a picture of the thing I want to buy. If it’s
groceries I put pictures of food there, if it’s clothes I use pictures of the pair
of shoes I’d like to buy. You put water in the bowl with the money, and you
pour the water and the money into one bowl and you state what you need.
The other woman pours the money into the other bowl and she states what
she needs. You continue to do this, you see, for some time depending on
how much you need.
One night I did it with a sister in LA from sunset to sunrise, when the
moon was no longer visible. And in the period of time between the new
moon and the full moon several very interesting things happened. She got a
check from these people she used to work for. She hadn’t worked for them
in a year, their bookkeeper looked on the books and decided that they
hadn’t sent her some back pay. They sent it to her, right? I was a waitress at
a health food restaurant at the time, and the other waitress decided that she
wanted some vacation so I got to work her hours—the tips increased, right?
And that was a small amount of money to take us out of the starving stage
and put us back on our feet. That’s a small one. It depends on how much
energy you put into it and what you need it for. It’s important that you know
what you need it for because the spirit deals in need.
But we live in a world where you think I gotta have so many things,
dollars in my hand and that is just not true, you know. The energy that is out
there that created the universe gave us everything we need. If we treated the
earth properly there would be enough for everybody to eat. You know that
bullshit about over-population is a crock. A misdistribution, you know.
Another earth charm that I really like is paralleling your growth with
that of a plant. If I’m getting ready to write a book, the first day that I lay
the first page out, I go out to get either a seedling or a baby plant. I put it
near that place where I’m working with the water. I feed the plant and I
work page two. I clip the plant today and I work page three. I spray the
plant today and I work page four. So that there is a direct relationship
between my growth and the growth of that plant.

G: But that’s scary because what if the plant starts dying?

T: If the plant starts dying then you have to reconsider the way you’re
operating, you see. And we do a lot of stuff around fear. In reality the two
basic emotions are fear and love and everything else is an aspect of one of
those. Fear has been drummed into us. Fear has been drummed into us like
nothing else. If you don’t go ask this expert then you’re supposed to be
afraid. Once you go see the infallible expert nothing can go wrong
anymore. A lot of times messages are coming through to us and we receive
them with fear because we’ve been trained to be fearful and that fear is the
thing that ruins the charm. My plant dying would be for me the sign that
I’ve come to a point of stagnation, you know. I’ve got to go back to the root
of the problem. I’ve got to take the plant out of its pot, look at it, see what is
not being done. I’ve got to lay that book down and read what is missing.
And you can set things up that way so that it is parallel. Overcoming certain
fears is so easy. It amazed me when I found out how to do it.
It’s really interesting that right now I’m speaking with a woman who is
in her early thirties and is having her first sexual experience. And some of
the things that she worries about I forgot that I used to worry about because
I’ve gone through enough of a process of cleaning myself—out of old guilt
and false responsibility and false senses of oppression. Speaking with her I
find that I am going to have to put her through the same thing that I’ve been
through.
You are a woman, you are human, you have the right to be sexual, you
have the right to be sexual with whomever you see fit to be sexual with.
You know, the false sense of morality has been designed, if you look at it, to
keeping women’s power in check. That comes through real clear on the
psychic level. Look at all the taboos around women’s blood. Women’s
blood contains the seed of new life. That is the power of the creator. Yet you
travel from circle to circle and they tell you women’s blood is this evil
thing. Then life itself has to be an evil thing. And I just feel that patriarchy
has made the god concept so lopsided, that man is all positive and woman is
all negative and that is bullshit, you know. Day cannot be day without night.

G: What do you think men hold against women most?

T: Well, specifically, the question of women’s blood. It’s the one thing we
have that they don’t. Now, the uterus, the vaginal blood, the power of
creation, the nurturing power that we have, the sustaining power that we
have is something that they don’t have. And when I look into the folklore of
Louisiana, when I look into the charms and the spells I find that the charms
involving women’s blood are the charms designed to overpower men.
That’s how women’s blood was used.

G: Even the love potions?

T: Yeah, it’s for bending his will. You use women’s blood to bend man’s
will. Of course there is a great taboo against it. As long as they (men) are
involved. That’s like Superman outlawing Kryptonite; of course he will.

G: Teish, I always felt when I was growing up that women had the power,
that women were strong, that women were the nurturers, and they pretended
that they didn’t have it, that the men did; it was a conspiracy. Men don’t
have it. So here is a woman using rituals and charms to bend men’s power,
when actually she could be straightening up her own.

T: We have now become victims of our own benevolence. We see certain

weaknesses. We are accustomed to mothering, raising, nurturing, looking
for potential, speeding the imagination with children. We have seen the
child in men and nurtured it in the same way. So now you have the son
growing up thinking that he can slap the mother who nursed him. I see that
happen a number of times. Before I liberated myself it was part of my
culture. You go out to dinner and the man didn’t have enough money you
slip it under the table so it looks like he paid for it. You learn how to
suggest subtly that this or that be done and then when he follows your
advice and it works you praise him for having such a wonderful idea. Bull.
Bull. The whole hog. I’m not doing that anymore. The goddess is not doing
that anymore. The trial is coming to an end. The grace period is slowly
drawing to a close. The queen is about to move on the chess board.

G: It’s about time.

T: Now I’m saying that the period where the goddess allows the little boy,
allows her son to go rampaging through the universe, is coming to a close.
She’s saying, “Johnny, you’ve misbehaved long enough. Now mother’s
going to whip you.”

G: Another thing I want to ask you is what kind of world do you want to live
in and when do you see this kind of world existing on the physical plane?

T: Well, it’s not in my lifetime. I know that. That’s the sad thing about it. It
is not in my lifetime. I’m into a world where people are judged by the
wealth of their soul, not their pockets. You know what I mean? I want each
person to have what they’ve earned by right of consciousness, you see. The
basis of it is what you can conceive mentally—the infinite power will give
you the substance to create it, you see. There has been entirely too much
rip-off for me. There have been too many people who have tilled the soil
and not eaten the fruit. There have been too many people that have written
the poems and not gotten the praise. There have been too many people that
have created the invention and then been used by the machine. That has to
stop.
I am shooting for a world where everybody eats, where everybody has
decent housing, where everybody has their basic necessities and the
freedom to be who they are. The freedom to express the spirit that is inside
of them. What is all this bowing and scraping to these various two-legged
authorities, you know? The only person I’m willing to bow to is the spirit.
And in my faith you don’t scrape in front of them, see.
 Our fates are tied. We have this strange notion on this planet that our
fates are not tied. If it were not so we would not be here together. It’s that
simple. But there’s this refusal to understand, so we create these false
classes. I’m richer than she is. I’m a different color than that one. I’m taller
than that one. That’s all bull. We all eat and shit in the same manner. And
until I meet someone with green blood who eats food and has no wastes
coming out of him, who never cries, who never has to sleep—when I meet
somebody like that, I may consider them superior. At first I’ll consider them
different. I’ll have to test it to see if they are in fact superior. That’s all I’m
after—everybody’s right to express the spirit that lives in them.

G: That would be a beautiful world. I kind of think that we will see that kind
of world in our lifetime. Or at least it’s beginnings. Otherwise it’s going to
be the end of us because we’re poisoning ourselves and our world pretty
fast.

T: Yeah. That’s another job that women spiritualists are taking over. We
seem to realize, because of our intimate connection with earth, that she is
sending us the message. She’s not going to tolerate any more of that. I don’t
know what the geologists think, they may have their theories of air getting
trapped under the earth and that’s why St. Helens was blowing. The woman
is blowing to tell you that she is mad and it’s that simple.

G: According to the Mayan calendar we are in El Quinto Sol (The Fifth

World Sun) and that this world will end by earthquake and fire on
December 24, 2011. I guess it parallels the end of the Piscean Age and the
beginning of the Aquarian. The sixth sun, which the Mayans call
“Consciousness,” will follow the fifth one.

T: I believe it. It’s really, really obvious when the water is messed up and
the air is messed up and the mountain begins to rumble, that is a real
indication: “Johnny, put your toy down; pay attention to your health;
momma’s about to explode.” But they won’t listen because they’re blinded
by greed. They are blinded by this grabby, grabby …

G: And they’re very insecure, peeny little beings, they’re very scared
they’re going to lose their power.
T: Exactly. And they ignore the one who is power. Where would their
power be if earth decides she’s had it?

Part Three: Smashing the Myth

G: What are the particular barriers or struggles involved in Third World

Women’s spirituality?

T: You have to understand that first and foremost, the greater part of our
problem as Third World people is that for a long time we internalized a lot
that we are nobody with nothing. You know, God is white therefore the all-
powerful is on the side of the one who is in power.
I remember quite some years ago when I was in St. Louis I was doing
a lot of demonstrating and stuff. There was this old Black woman I was
talking to and trying to get her to go to a demonstration with me, you know.
It was down by the old courthouse by the St. Louis arch and she said to me,
she said, “You know, there’s a chopping block in there where they used to
sell niggers.” She said, “Now if you go down there and take a look you will
see that the blood is still on that chopping block. It’s stained in the wood,
you know. You can’t be going down and telling these white folks what to
do.” I said, “Oh yes, I can. I have some power, they have to hear me. I’m
not going to just lay down and die, dada dadada.” And she said to me,
“Chile, don’t you know god suffered the Indians to die so that the white
men could have this land.” And I blew my stack. Because there it was right
there, you know.

G: Believing in the white man’s conditioning, in their shit.

T: My gods tell me that things are not that absolute, that there is always a
struggle of power going on and that I must struggle for this power.
The basic problem that we have had was believing somebody else’s
story about us—what we can and cannot do, who we can and cannot be. As
Third World people we needed it more than anybody because we have been
kept down for so long and this is the thing that’s so hard for people to
accept. Most Third World people on the surface seem to have accepted the
rigidity of Christianity, yet certain true things still survive. And what we’ve
got to do is feed that which has survived, build on that which has survived
till our gods and goddesses speak. “Oh, yes, my children are strong now,
they are ready now. Give them a total green light. Let’s go, ya’ll.” You
know the baby goes from crawling to walking. We’ve come out of an
infancy of oppression into our own power because there’s enough
archeological evidence that everybody at one point or another had a great
civilization. Every people alive had a great civilization until this man came
along whose environment tricked him, you know. It was the snow, I feel,
that was responsible for the unusual aggression of the Europeans and their
chance encounter with gunpowder, you see, from the East. Put those two
things together and here comes this big conquering hero.

G: And also fear I think, fear had a great deal to do with it, fear of not
surviving made him more aggressive. Made him take up weapons for
defense, become cold, reasoning.
When you said that that which has survived through the ages comes
from women’s power and spirituality, I was thinking of La Virgen de
Guadalupe that my Mamágrande Ramona had on her altar. When the
Spaniards took over Mexico they instituted Catholicism, but a lot of my
people kept some of the old gods and goddesses by integrating them into the
Christian ones. So now La Virgen de Guadalupe contains within her
Tonantzin, the Aztec creation goddess. Mexicans attach more power to her
than they do to the patriarchal god and his long-suffering son.

T: Yeah. I came into religion in the sixties. We were looking for the history.
We were looking for the rhyme and reason behind our struggle. How did
things get turned around? How can we reclaim our blackness? And so when
you look at what has come down we immediately see the militant aspect,
we see this is something that has survived through the threat of death. The
whole Black power movement was a very sexist movement, you know, here
the main theme was reinstating the Black man, OK. The problem with the
Black men, the reason that they couldn’t get jobs, and this is another piece
of bullshit, was because Black women were too strong. That she was the
castrator and that that was what was wrong with us.

G: What was wrong with you was that you were too strong?

T: I was too strong. I was not a woman, dada dada da. So I came into the
movement, trying to be the perfect African woman. In the process I find out
there used to be a cult of women in Africa who were warriors, you know,
who cut a man’s penis and stuck it in his mouth as a mark that they had
done this. I find out that the major god was an androgyne. I learn that the
lightning bolt originally belonged to a female deity. I start learning things
that whisper of very strong women, you know. I was very confused by it all
for awhile, until I accepted a personal message from her. She was telling me
that the sexism I was experiencing in the movement religion should not be
tolerated anymore and she was laying the responsibility on me to put an end
to it. So from there, I had to confront, finally, the “men’s room.” When I
talk about the “men’s room,” I mean a room in this collective spiritual
household where women were not allowed to go, because according to the
males we would be struck by lightning if we went in there. So one day I just
on my own decided I’m going to walk in there and disprove this myth. I
was somewhat scared that hey I would get struck by lightning until I had a
dream that said, you know, go. I want you to go, go, go, go. And finally, if
you don’t go you’ll be sorry. So very nervously I said, “OK momma, this is
what you told me to do. I’m a good chile. Please stop the thunder god from
hitting me. Please, please momma, I’m depending on you” and I walk on in
there and smash a myth.

Note
1. The book in progress was Working the Mother. Published as Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s
Book of Charms and Practical Rituals (New York: Harper One, 1985). (Editor, 2015)
Brownness
Andrea Canaan

I am brown and I have experienced life as a brown person.1 Outwardly I

have traversed with ease the salons of the white rich, the bayous and lakes
of cajun South Louisiana, the hot-white racism of Shreveport, the folksy
back-slapping, peculiar institutions of Natchez, the friendly invisible
oppression of Bay St. Louis and Ocean Springs, the humid, lazy apathy of
New Orleans. With soul intact, identity sure, sense of humanness unchained
by myth and ignorance, I have lived my years inside brown skin that didn’t
show the bruises, the wounds, to anyone.
Since before I can remember, brownness was always compared to
whiteness in terms that were ultimately degrading for brownness. Lazy,
shiftless, poor, nonhuman, dirty, abusive, ignorant, uncultured, uneducated,
were used to convey conscious and unconscious messages that brown was
not a good thing to be and the ultimate model of things right and good was
white. Yes, white people called me nigger, forced me to drink from separate
fountains, would not allow me to sit in the front of the bus. This message,
however, was first and most transmitted by brown. There was an all
powerful and real knowledge, like the pungent smell of chitterlings cooking
on a rainy winter day, that no matter how good, how clean, how pious the
brown, they could not equal or reflect the ultimate good and right-white.
Now understand, no brown person acknowledged feeling this way or
accepted responsibility for conveying the message. Everyone joked,
laughed, and put down white. We put up and revered brown. For all the up
brown and down white a black comedy twisted and reversed the jokes, the
laughs, and the put-downs back into brown. We welcomed this black
comedy routine. We made its scenes our rituals. We claimed the right of
self-defacement. We remained degraded inside ourselves and we continued
to empower others to control us.
 Don’t mistake me, brown is not The Oppressor but the victim. But part
of our victimization is self-oppression. Our adaptations were creative, the
end goal, survival. 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. The system’s apex is the
reality that while adapting to white language, dress, worship, thought and
social interaction we had not gained social acceptance. Further, while
sacrificing, working, praying, singing, fighting, and dying for and with
white, we had not gained equality, economic security, or freedom. What we
had gained was an insidious terrifying, self-negating desire—even need—to
be white.
By the time I was a woman, I had all the necessary external survival
skills needed, supposedly, to protect me from the rejection and humiliation
projected onto me by white media, government, church, and social
institutions. I had unending strength, evergrowing intellect, a heart as big as
the heavens and earth, a soul more forgiving than gods themselves, and I
accepted total responsibility for myself, my own oppressed state, the
oppression of the brown man, and the sin of being both brown and woman.
This superwoman veneer protected me from the external world much of the
time. This superwoman veneer also warded off internal self-reflection
needed to assess if indeed I was strong enough to carry such heavy burdens.
The evergrowing intellect was an additional burden because the ability to
think allows me to look at, if not truly see, options and truth. The open heart
and forgiving soul stifled my rightful indignation, gagged my rage, and
forced my fears, my needs, my rage, my joys, my accomplishments, inward.
The acceptance of total responsibility, real, concrete, or abstract, for myself
and others became my ultimate straitjacket, the last and strongest barrier to
self. The guilt alone associated with such responsibility should have broken
the backs of brown women long ago. The isolation is deafening and support
is non-existent. The inherent conflicts of interests of parents, children,
husbands, lovers, church, state, and self cry out like sound and fury and we
think ourselves crazed because there is a constant buzz in our ears. In this
state I began to see, as through a lifting mist, the enemies of self.
Racial memory coursed through my veins. Memories of being
snatched away by friend and stranger, stuffed into vessels that traversed
vast spaces of water, chained, whipped, branded, hunted and sold by
overlapping generational systems of degradation that were supported by
male gods, male governments, male-controlled social institutions across the
globe, across the centuries. I was sure that the ultimate evil was the white
male, and I became afraid of him. It was a survival fear of being fooled by
bright promises, hope-laden movement songs, loopholed constitutional
amendments and proclamations. Afraid of being enslaved again, afraid of
being annihilated this time.
My brown woman community counted our most dangerous enemy as
the white woman. Didn’t she seduce brown men and cry rape? Didn’t her
status forever decree our children born out of forced rape by her brothers,
sons, husbands, and fathers illegitimate and create a caste system within
brown that made light brown better than dark brown and her delicate white,
best? Doesn’t the hand that rocks the cradle rule the world? Is she not
responsible for the actions and sins of her men? Did not her essential evil
cause the downfall of her men? Is she not cloaked in sexual mystery so that
our brown men cannot resist her? Does she not compete with us for brown
men, the centers of our lives, as well as white men, our benevolent, if
somewhat distracted and crabby, fathers? Does she not force us to use our
bodies as a commodity in the white marketplace in order to feed our babies
in order to feed our men?
The mist began to clear. I could no longer justify viewing the white
woman as the personification of the evil done to us, the dangerous enemy. I
began to look at the things brown women faced with a watchful eye for a
power base. What is rape but power? What is racism but power? What is
poverty but power? What is sexism but power? What is oppression but
power? What is deception but power? What is fear but power? I began to
see the enemy as those forces within me that allowed others to control me
and those who empowered or sought to empower themselves to control me.
I could see my enemy as my brownness, my community, my mothers
and fathers, sisters and brothers. This is logical, given my patterns of self
oppression. I could isolate myself from the brown community, claiming my
right to be me without concern for our growth and development as a whole.
I would, however, be cutting off an essential part of my development to
nurture another. I would simply be acknowledging the oppression of my
brownness and not that of my femaleness. They are both essential and
important, however. The fact is I am brown and female, and my growth and
development are tied to the entire community. I must nurture and develop
brown self, woman, man, and child. I must address the issues of my own
oppression and survival. When I separate them, isolate them, and ignore
them, I separate, isolate, and ignore myself. I am a unit. A part of
brownness. My health, energy, intellect, and talent are resources of my
community. When I fall ill my community is weakened. When my
community is invaded by disease I am affected, even killed. I must work
both as an individual and as a part of my community in order to survive in
order for my community to survive.
It would be very easy to identify white women as my enemy. As long
as I do, however, I accept my devalued, oppressed, unliberated woman
state. We do not trust her because she is white. We do not seek to know her
because we would be betraying our brownness, collaborating with the
enemy, whiteness. We do not embrace her because she is woman. And
women, we remain believing, are evil beings who started this entire mess in
the garden of eden. The problem here is that as we remain isolated and
unknowing of woman, any woman, we continue to accept the basis for a
part of our oppression. As we trade distrust and irresponsibility we trade off
our liberation. It’s as if we think liberation a fixed quantity, that there is
only so much to go around. That an individual or community is liberated at
the expense of another. When we view liberation as a scarce resource,
something only a precious few of us can have, we stifle our potential, our
creativity, our genius for living, learning and growing.
It is hardest to see my enemy as brown men yet in order to see myself
clearly I must face the closest threat to my survival for it is he who most
rapes me, batters me, devalues my strength, will not allow my weakness.
He is closest to me for he is my father, my brother, my son, my man, my
lover. I love him, I glory in his maleness and agonize in his degradation. I
must refuse to allow him to oppress me while I must be concerned for his
survival. This major conflict of interest is basic to brown oppression. Divide
and conquer. Choose who is more worthy of liberation. I refuse to play this
diabolical self-destructive game. I refuse to play out the superwoman image
as I refuse to believe the powerless, weak, politically ineffective, superstud
image of the brown man. We are both strong and weak, oppressed and
oppressor of each, as well as by the white super culture. Our individual and
collective development as men and women will not jeopardize but enhance
our liberation. The brown man is not my enemy. Nor I his, but we must
recognize that we both contribute to each other’s oppression.
It would be easiest of all to see the white male as the enemy. He has
the giant share of power. He controls our governments, resources, social
institutions, language, education. Essentially he controls the world. To see
him as the evil all-powerful enemy, however, forces me to accept little
responsibility for my own oppression. It negates my power to change my
status. When I accept white male power as inevitable and not within my
control, I accept my impotence to acquire power and control for myself,
through and for my brown community, through and for my world
community. To give to brown, white, men, women, etc., the status of all-
powerful is to cloak them in mystery and power. We must focus on those
things within us that allow others to control us, know those who would
empower themselves to control us and understand that the forces can be
brown male or female, white male or female, as well as our selves. We must
demystify and know more in depth the world around and in us in order to
distinguish friend from foe rather than accepting prefabricated enemies.
The enemy is brownness and whiteness, maleness and femaleness. The
enemy is our urgent need to stereotype and close off people, places, and
events into isolated categories. Hatred, distrust, irresponsibility, unloving,
classism, sexism, and racism, in their myriad forms, cloud our vision and
isolate us. This closed and limited view blocks women embracing women,
brown women embracing brown women, brown women embracing brown
men, brown women embracing white women and women embracing men.
We close off avenues of communication and vision so that individual and
communal trust, responsibility, loving, and knowing are impossible.
In facing myself, while eliminating my self oppression, I stumble into
a terrifying and isolated place. If I reject and question concepts, mores, and
values of my brown community, where is my support, where is my family,
what becomes of my sense of community … peoplehood? While becoming
myself, will I become so different, so threatening, that they too will reject
me?
I am facing that terror and isolation as are brown women across the
globe. When we question ourselves, seek to create harmonious, supportive,
nurturing, liberating environments for ourselves, we find the white and
brown super cultures ready to wage battle together in order to make us
reform, in order to decrease their stress and difficulty in visualizing
difference and selfhood as revolution and revolution as positive and
necessary for cohabitation on this planet.
The white super culture has not yet erased my brown presence, but it
continually seeks to erase my individual freedom to be different, to make
decisions and choices for myself. The brown community feels the awful
terrifying pressure and transmits urgent messages to me to blend, hide,
retreat, in order to survive even at the expense of self. Survive by any
means necessary, including self defacement, self negation, and the
allowance of powerlessness.
I hold arm raised, fist clenched to the white super culture. I embrace
the brown community with respect and deep loving, but with firm
insistence that being myself, being different—even radically different from
my mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers—is my right, my duty, my way
of living a whole and sane existence, accepting the responsibility and
consequences of being true to myself in order to be true to my humanness
in order to be true to my community.
I send a warning to you white woman. The women’s movement, the
feminist movement, is not a middle-class clique. It is not an elitist class of
white women hiding from men. It is a positive ever-growing movement of
women who believe in the equality of all people. Women who are not
willing to settle for token change but insist that the economic and political
resources and power of this nation this world be distributed equally. It is
women being concerned about women and being willing to place women’s
needs and their development first. It is a battle for economic, political, and
social freedom and not a battle of sexes. It is not white. It is not racist. It is
not classist. It is not closed. Understand that although we are of the same
gender we must cross over miles of mistrust and cross victimization in
order to meet, in order to learn and grow and work together. Understand
that sexism is not the ultimate evil but a place of unification, a place of
commonality, a place from which to become a political force for women,
for humanness.
I challenge you, brown woman. You, who will not interface the
women’s movement. You, who say the movement is separatist, white,
lesbian, without glamour. Further, you say you are too liberated and want to
be dependent, protected, shackled to the pedestal. “Ain’t you a woman?”
Look at yourself, your community, your country, your world and ask
yourself, who has the least to lose and the most to gain from economic
security, equality, freedom? Who has waited longest, deferred most, worked
hardest, lived poorest, nurtured, encouraged, loved more while asking the
least in return? Who I ask you? Yes, you are correct. You yourself. Yet who
is most oppressed in this land today? No! Don’t put on your visor. It is not
the brown man or the third world man. It is the brown woman, the third
world woman. Understand, the people who are most oppressed in a society
have the most investment in that society’s change. It is when that bottom
layer becomes a political force for itself that change will occur. Changes
will not only occur for that layer but will move outward and upward
throughout that society. Remember the civil rights movement? It has
reverberated around the world to become a human rights movement. We are
the bottom of the heap, brown women. We have the most to gain and least
to lose. Straight and lesbian among us, we must fight, learn and grow with,
and for, ourselves, our mothers, daughters, and sisters across this nation
across this globe and yes, brown women, we must fight, learn, grow with,
and for our fathers, brothers, sons, and men.
The buck stops here as it did with a brown woman in Montgomery,
Alabama. The women’s movement is ours.

Note
1. While I know and identify black, my first knowing of myself before I knew much about skin
color and its effects was as a brown baby girl looking in the mirror of my mother’s face. Brown
is my color, the very shade of which colors my existence both inside the black community and
outside of it.
Revolution
It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick

Pat Parker

The following speech was given at the BASTA conference in Oakland,

California, in August 1980. It represented three organizations: The Black
Women’s Revolutionary Council, the Eleventh Hour Battalion, and the
Feminist Women’s Health Center in Oakland.

I have been to many conferences: People’s Constitutional convention in

Washington, DC, Women’s Conference on Violence in San Francisco,
Lesbian Conference in Los Angeles, International Tribunal on Crimes
Against Women in Belgium. I’ve been to more conferences than I can name
and to many I would like to forget, but I have never come to a conference
with as much anticipation and feeling of urgency.
We are in a critical time. Imperialist forces in the world are finding
themselves backed against the wall; no longer able to control the world with
the threat of force. And they are getting desperate. And they should be
desperate. What we do here this weekend and what we take from this
conference can be the difference, the deciding factor as to whether a group
of women will ever again be able to meet not only in this country, but the
entire world. We are facing the most critical time in the history of the world.
The superpowers cannot afford for us to join forces and work to rid this
earth of them, and we cannot afford not to.
In order to leave here prepared to be a strong force in the fight against
imperialism we must have a clear understanding of what imperialism is and
how it manifests itself in our lives. It is perhaps easier for us to understand
the nature of imperialism when we look at how this country deals with other
countries. It doesn’t take a great amount of political sophistication to see
how the interest of oil companies played a role in our relationship with the
Shah’s Iran. The people of Iran were exploited in order for Americans to
drive gas-guzzling monsters. And that is perhaps the difficult part of
imperialism for us to understand. The rest of the world is being exploited in
order to maintain our standard of living. We who are five percent of the
world’s population use 40 percent of the world’s oil.
As anti-imperialists we must be prepared to destroy all imperialist
governments; and we must realize that by doing this we will drastically
alter the standard of living that we now enjoy. We cannot talk on one hand
about making revolution in this country, yet be unwilling to give up our
videotape records and recreational vehicles. An anti-imperialist understands
the exploitation of the working class, understands that in order for
capitalism to function, there must be a certain percentage that is
unemployed. We must also define our friends and enemies based on their
stand on imperialism.
At this time, the super powers are in a state of decline. The Iranians
rose up and said no to US imperialism; the Afghanis and Eritreans are
saying no to Soviet-social imperialism. The situation has become critical
and the only resource left is world war between the US and the Soviet
Union. We are daily being given warning that war is imminent. To some
people, this is no significant change, just escalation. The Blacks, poor
whites, Chicanos, and other oppressed people of this country already know
we’re at war.
And the rest of the country’s people are being prepared. The media is
bombarding us with patriotic declarations about “our” hostages and “our”
embassy in Iran. This government is constantly reminding us of “our”
commitment to “our” allies in Israel. Ads inviting us to become the 17
“few,” the “chosen,” the marine or “fly with the air force,” etc., are filling
our 18 television screens.
And it doesn’t stop there. This system is insidious in its machinations.
It’s no coincidence that the “right wing” of this country is being mobilized.
Media sources are bombarding us with the news of KKK and Nazi party
activity. But we who were involved in the civil rights movement are very
familiar with these tactics. We remember the revelations of FBI agents, not
only infiltrating the Klan but participating in and leading their activities.
And we are not for one moment fooled by these manipulations.
The Klan and the Nazis are our enemies and must be stopped, but to
simply mobilize around stopping them is not enough. They are
functionaries, tools of this governmental system. They serve in the same
way as our armed forces and police. To end Klan or Nazi activity doesn’t
end imperialism. It doesn’t end institutional racism; it doesn’t end sexism; it
does not bring this monster down, and we must not forget what our goals
are and who our enemies are. To simply label these people as lunatic fringes
and not accurately assess their roles as a part of this system is a dangerous
error. These people do the dirty work. They are the arms and legs of the
congressmen, the businessmen, the Tri-lateral Commission.
And the message they bring is coming clear. Be a good American—
Support registration for the draft. The equation is being laid out in front of
us. Good American equals Support Imperialism and war. To this, I must
declare—I am not a good American. I do not wish to have the world
colonized, bombarded and plundered in order to eat steak.
Each time a national liberation victory is won I applaud and support it.
It means we are one step closer to ending the madness that we live under. It
means we weaken the chains that are binding the world.
Yet to support national liberation struggles alone is not enough. We
must actively fight within the confines of this country to bring it down. I am
not prepared to let other nationalities do my dirty work for me. I want the
people of Iran to be free. I want the people of Puerto Rico to be free, but I
am a revolutionary feminist because I want me to be free. And it is critically
important to me that you who are here, that your commitment to revolution
is based on the fact that you want revolution for yourself.
In order for revolution to be possible, and revolution is possible, it
must be led by the poor and working-class people of this country. Our
interest does not lie with being a part of this system, and our tendencies to
be co-opted and diverted are lessened by the realization of our oppression.
We know and understand that our oppression is not simply a question of
nationality but that poor and working-class people are oppressed throughout
the world by the imperialist powers.
We as women face a particular oppression, not in a vacuum but as a
part of this corrupt system. The issues of women are the issues of the
working class as well. By not having this understanding, the women’s
movement has allowed itself to be co-opted and misdirected.
It is unthinkable to me as a revolutionary feminist that some women’s
liberationists would entertain the notion that women should be drafted in
exchange for passage of the ERA. This is a clear example of not
understanding imperialism and not basing one’s political line on its
destruction. If the passage of the ERA means that I am going to become an
equal participant in the exploitation of the world; that I am going to bear
arms against other Third World people who are fighting to reclaim what is
rightfully theirs—then I say Fuck the ERA.
One of the difficult questions for us to understand is just “what is
revolution?” Perhaps we have had too many years of media madness with
“revolutionary eye makeup and revolutionary tampons.” Perhaps we have
had too many years of Hollywood fantasy where the revolutionary man kills
his enemies and walks off into the sunset with his revolutionary woman
who has been waiting for his return. And that’s the end of the tale.
The reality is that revolution is not a one step process: you fight—you
win—it’s over. It takes years. Long after the smoke of the last gun has faded
away the struggle to build a society that is classless, that has no traces of
sexism and racism in it, will still be going on. We have many examples of
societies in our lifetime that have had successful armed revolution. And we
have no examples of any country that has completed the revolutionary
process. Is Russia now the society that Marx and Lenin dreamed? Is China
the society that Mao dreamed? Before and after armed revolution there
must be education, and analysis, and struggle. If not, and even if so, one
will be faced with coups, counterrevolution and revision.
The other illusion is that revolution is neat. It’s not neat or pretty or
quick. It is a long dirty process. We will be faced with decisions that are not
easy. We will have to consider the deaths of friends and family. We will be
faced with the decisions of killing members of our own race.
Another illusion that we suffer under in this country is that a single
facet of the population can make revolution. Black people alone cannot
make revolution in this country. Native American people alone cannot make
revolution in this country. Chicanos alone cannot make revolution in this
country. Asians alone cannot make revolution in this country. White people
alone cannot make revolution in this country. Women alone cannot make
revolution in this country. Gay people alone cannot make revolution in this
country. And anyone who tries it will not be successful.
Yet it is critically important for women to take a leadership role in this
struggle. And I do not mean leading the way to the coffee machine.
A part of the task charged to us this weekend is deciding the direction
we must take. First I say let us reclaim our movement. For too long I have
watched the white middle class be represented as my leaders in the
women’s movement. I have often heard that the women’s movement is a
white middle-class movement.
I am a feminist. I am neither white nor middle class. And the women
that I’ve worked with were like me. Yet I am told that we don’t exist, and
that we didn’t exist. Now I understand that the racism and classism of some
women in the movement prevented them from seeing me and people like
me. But I also understand that with the aid of the media many middle-class
women were made more visible. And this gave them an opportunity to use
their skills gained through their privilege to lead the movement into at first
reformist and now counterrevolutionary bullshit.
These women allowed themselves to be red-baited and dyke-baited
into isolating and ignoring the progressive elements of the women’s
movement. And I, for one, am no longer willing to watch a group of self-
serving reformist idiots continue to abort the demands of revolutionary
thinking women. You and I are the women’s movement. Its leadership and
direction should come from us.
We are charged with the task of rebuilding and revitalizing the dreams
of the ’60s and turning it into the reality of the ’80s. And it will not be easy.
At the same time that we must weed reformist elements out of our
movement, we will have to fight tooth and nail with our brothers and sisters
of the left. For in reality, we are “all products of a decadent capitalist
society.”
At the same time that we must understand and support the men and
women of national liberation struggles—the left (especially upper- and
middle-class women) must give up its undying loyalty to the nuclear family.
The nuclear family is the basic unit of capitalism and in order for us to
move to revolution it has to be destroyed. And I mean destroyed. The male
left has duped too many women with cries of genocide into believing it is
revolutionary to be bound to babies. As to the question of abortion, I am
appalled at the presumptions of men. The question is whether or not we
have control of our bodies which in turn means control of our community
and its growth. I believe that Black women are as intelligent as white
women and we know when to have babies or not. And I want no man
regardless of color to tell me when and where to bear children. As long as
women are bound by the nuclear family structure we cannot effectively
move toward revolution. And if women don’t move, it will not happen.
 We do not have an easy task before us. At this conference we will
disagree; we will get angry; we will fight. This is good and should be
welcomed. Here is where we should air our differences but here is also
where we should build. In order to survive in this world we must make a
commitment to change it; not reform it—revolutionize it. Here is where we
begin to build a new women’s movement, not one easily co-opted and
misdirected by media pigs and agents of this insidious imperialist system.
Here is where we begin to build a revolutionary force of women. Judy
Grahn in the “She Who” poem says, “When she who moves, the earth will
turn over.” You and I are the “She Who” and if we dare to struggle, dare to
win, this earth will turn over.
No Rock Scorns Me as Whore
Chrystos

5:32 a.m.—May
The water doesn’t breathe No rowdy boats disturb her serenity I dream
of days when she was this way each moment Days when no one went
anywhere full of loud pompousness self-importance Days when dinosaurs
were not being rudely dug up for their remains Days when order dignity &
respect were possible Days when the proportions of things were sacred O
the moon in a dawn sky is good enough
Where are the people who cry “I am I am” as the gulls do? They rope
themselves off with labels They stand inside a box called their job, their
clothes, their political & social opinions, the movies or books they read I’ve
never believed those items which is why I was considered crazy I want to
know the truth I glimpse under that malarkey called “civilization” Maybe
people have become so stupid as a result of having too many machines The
company we keep
It is clear to me that the use of nuclear power is dangerous—as is
almost every other aspect of the dominant culture Including the
manufacture of the paper on which this is written No produce from Vashon
Island can be sold because the earth there is poisonous from the chemicals
Tacoma’s paper plant produces My life is a part of the poisoning & cars
Alternate energy sources cannot fuel what “America” has become I know
this way of living will not last much longer I accept it I will be glad if we
destroy ourselves We have made a much bigger mess than the dinosaurs
Other ways will follow Perhaps not It is none of our business I draw
because I can’t think what else to do until the end Maybe it will take longer
than I think I’m not willing at the moment to give up the electric blanket I
am under & I do not notice too many radicals giving up their stereos, hot
showers, cars & blenders Energy to run those machines must come from
somewhere No protest march will alter the head-on collision Nothing short
of completely altering the whole culture will stop it I don’t think that all of
the people here could be supported on an alternative culture Well if they
manage to make a revolution they’ll kill lots of people Most could not
survive adjustment to simpler life & so they will unknowingly fight it even
the radicals Another case of lecturing vegetarians in leather shoes
Although it is heresy to admit it, many Indian people could not survive
either It takes a lot of power to manufacture a can of Budweiser We have
become as poisoned as the eagle’s eggshell We have fought We still fight
Most of us have died fighting Some of us walk around dead inside a bottle I
am ashamed I am heartbroken I still fight to survive I mourn I get up I live a
middle-class life Sometimes
We have lost touch with the sacred To survive we must begin to know
sacredness The pace which most of us live prevents this I begin only now to
understand faint glimpses of the proper relationships of time, of beings I
don’t dig for clams because that is the main food of many birds here I have
an abundance of other food available to me Too many humans clam this
beach already A stronger & stronger sense that I want to grow food
ourselves Probably that is not possible I’m not thrilled about the idea of
slaughter & I am not a vegetarian We’ll see Gradually, I am taught how to
behave by new teachers By leaves, by flowers, by fruits & rhythms of rain
My mother & father were not good teachers They are too deeply damaged
by this culture which is one of obliteration I don’t know why I see
differently than they do My blessing and burden
The depth that I seek here only comes when I remove the ears in my
mind Ears discourage my honesty & because I am so isolated here honesty
is absolutely essential to my survival There is no way to “be nice” to a tree
or politely endure a thunderstorm I am stripped of pretensions as I was at
nine by the wild gentle beauty of California before everybody came with
stucco track houses & turquoise plastic couches I am a child again here A
child frightened by the idea of progress, new housing, more strangers I
begin to love these lines of dark trees as I loved the hills to which I
belonged as a girl Those hills hold nothing now Mostly leveled Without
deer, without puma, without pheasant, without blue-bellied lizards, without
quail, without ancient oaks Lawns instead Deeply disgusted by lawns
Stupid flat green crew cuts Nothing for anybody to eat
I am still in love with the mystery of shadows, wind, bird song The
reason that I continue despite many clumsy mistakes, is love My love for
humans, or rather my continuous attempts to love, have been misdirected I
am not wise However there is no shame when one is foolish with a tree No
bird ever called me crazy No rock scorns me as a whore The earth means
exactly what it says The wind is without flattery or lust Greed is balanced
by the hunger of all So I embrace anew, as my childhood spirit did, the
whispers of a world without words
I realized one day after another nuclear protest, another proposed bill
to make a nuclear waste disposal here, that I had no power with those My
power rests with a greater being, a silence which goes on behind the uproar
I decided that in a nuclear holocaust, for certainly they will be stupid
enough to cause one if their history is any example, that I wanted to be
planting corn & squash After there will be other beings of some kind
They’ll still need to eat Aren’t the people who come to take clams like those
who lobby at the airport for nuclear power? Who is not guilty of being a
thief? Who among us gives back as much as we take? Who among us has
enough respect? Does anyone know the proper proportions? My distant
ancestors knew some things that are lost to me & I would not have the
insidious luxury of this electric heat, this journal & pen without the
concurrent problems of nuclear waste storage When we are gone, someone
else will come Dinosaur eggs might hatch in the intense heat of nuclear
explosions I will be sad to see the trees & birds on fire Surely they are
innocent as none of us has been
With their songs, they know the sacred I am in a circle with that soft,
enduring word In it is the wisdom of all peoples Without a deep, deep
understanding of the sacredness of life, the fragility of each breath, we are
lost The holocaust has already occurred What follows is only the burning
brush How my heart aches & cries to write these words I am not as calmly
indifferent as I sound I will be screaming no no no more destruction in that
last blinding light
Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Body Tracks), 1974
One from a suite of six lifetime color photographs, 8″ x 10″
© The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection
Appendix
 The coeditors in 1981.

From Sojourner—October 1981. A Boston Women’s newspaper.

 Afterword
On the Fourth Edition

Cherríe Moraga

Re-visioning This Bridge Called My Back thirty-five years later has given
me great pause. I keep remembering Gloria’s line: “Who am I, a poor
Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write?” (161). And I think about
how true it was—for both of us—those self-doubts, those deeply internal
questions about our “right to write.” Gloria Anzaldúa and I came to the
publishing project of Bridge as feminist activist writers, giving readings and
organizing cultural events in the Bay Area, but with few publishing credits
to our name. In the late 1970s, Chicanas were barely beginning to produce
work in magazines and small press chapbooks. With some exceptions, the
same could be said of Native and Asian American women writers at the
time. But, we did have support along the way …
In the history of Bridge, Gloria has often acknowledged the artist-
writer Merlin Stone as one of the book’s chief advocates. (xlvi, 262.) I
would like to also acknowledge a few more. The lesbian feminist writer and
poet, Adrienne Rich, brought significant visibility to the project of Bridge.
In 1979, swallowing my own timidity as a student of her work (we had
never met), I sent Adrienne a draft of “La Güera” in order to announce our
book plans and solicit her support. To my amazement, she invited me to
publish the essay in The Coming Out Stories (Persephone Press, 1980), for
which she was writing a foreword. Adrienne would also become an active
supporter of the founding of Kitchen Table Press and its effort to republish
Bridge after Persephone’s closure in 1982.
 Sally Miller Gearhart, the lesbian feminist activist and the author of
The Wanderground (another Persephone title, 1979), was actually the first
to recommend Bridge to Persephone Press. The manuscript was then
entitled “Smashing the Myth!” (Teish, 229). A lesbian separatist in theory,
Sally was my graduate studies advisor at San Francisco State University.
We fought politics all the time … with an abiding love.
If the story of the making of Bridge teaches, as much as the book itself,
it does so by recognizing that yes, “race matters.” The support of these
white women with “cultural capital” did not make or break our project. In
fact, Gloria and I often laughed that we would have mimeographed the
book and distributed it on street corners, if that were all that had been
available to us. Still, their “access” brought us access—to a national
feminist publishing and distribution network for a collection of “writings by
radical women of color.”
In a uniquely distinct way, Audre Lorde’s and Toni Cade Bambara’s
presence in Bridge also impacted Bridge’s success. Audre and Toni were
exemplary sister-writers, emblematic of that great surge of Black feminist
writing spilling into our hands in 1970s and ’80s. As “sisters of the
yam” … they stood up in unwavering solidarity with the rest of us “sisters
of the rice, sisters of the corn, sisters of the plantain” (xxxvii) and that
mattered. It helped put Bridge, coedited by two “unknown” Chicana
writers, on the political-literary map.
All in all, it was a brave moment in feminist history.

More personally, what is not known about the history of Bridge is the role
the book played in my own evolution as a student and a public thinker.
Perhaps I speak of it here for the students who hunger for “that life of the
mind” to go public, to create actual testifiable change in one’s life.
During the summer of 1980, when I went east to find a publisher for
Bridge, I was completing course work in a “Special Master’s” program in
Feminist Writings at SFSU. Under the generous tutelage of Sally Gearhart
and her then-partner, English professor Jane Gurko, I had designed my own
program. (There were no graduate studies programs in Women’s Studies at
the time.) Upon my return, I was due to write my thesis, but when I came
back from Boston, I came back changed. I had already come to realize that
the project of Bridge had not only taken over my life, but also my life
purpose. A standard master’s thesis was no longer viable. And I made my
case to my advisors.
Within the context of the late 1970s utterly white-middle-class-
dominated genre of feminist writings (mediated by white instructors),
Bridge was the logical and necessary critical outcome to my feminist
studies. The book was an enormous collective “fill in the blank”—of so
much that had been missing in my own education. It was what never
appeared on a reading list.
Its labor was my thesis.
And my true teachers, Jane and Sally, concurred. With a ten-page
paper to “justify” the project, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color became my (our) woman of color “thesis,” stacked
somewhere, in manuscript form, on the library shelves of SFSU. I honor
Jane and Sally as models of an old-school feminist teaching practice, where
professors were willing to “break the rules” to allow their students a
“change of mind” (xlvi). I’ve been meaning to thank those two women in
print for thirty-five years.

Having lived for several months now re-viewing, in great detail, the pages
of the original This Bridge Called My Back, these women writers’ younger
voices have entered my heart (and gut) all over again; but, perhaps in an
even more profound way. Because I know now, thirty-five years later, what
courage it took those women to speak up—before their time—not only on
the pages of Bridge, but all the “speaking up” they had to do first in order to
finally get to those pages.
They are/were warrior women, to be sure, some of them more deeply
than we can ever know.

“There was no body to talk to,” my companion reminds me. We sit

across the kitchen table.

“Yes,” I say, “that’s why we wrote the book.”

En gratitud,
clm
 26 de noviembre 2014

Notes on the Fourth Edition …

The year 2015 marks 35th anniversary of the making of This Bridge Called
My Back, first published in 1981 by the feminist Persephone Press of
Watertown, Massachusetts. The collection was subsequently published by
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press of New York City less than two years
later. In many ways, Kitchen Table Press emerged in the effort to keep
Bridge in print; for within a year or so after Bridge’s original publication,
Persephone had ceased operation. The founding members of Kitchen Table
Press included Bridge 1981 contributors: hattie gossett, Audre Lorde,
Barbara Smith, and myself, Cherríe Moraga. The initial core collective also
included Alma Gómez, Leota Lone Dog, Mariana Romo-Carmona, and
Susan Yung, among others. In 2002, the third edition of Bridge was
published in a small print run by Third Woman Press of the Department of
Ethnic Studies at the University of California–Berkeley, under the direction
of Bridge contributor, Norma Alarcón.
The core writings in the fourth edition of This Bridge Called My Back
effectively replicate the original 1981 publication of the book. What is new
to this 2015 edition are the introductory materials, occasional editor notes to
provide some historical contexts, and, most notably the inclusion of new
artwork, and three new poems from the 1980s by Kate Rushin.

The artwork in the 2015 edition was largely collected from the Third
Woman Press edition, curated by Xicana (O’dami) artist Celia Herrera
Rodríguez. It replaces the original drawings by one artist, Johnetta Tinker
(Gracias!), with a larger representation of eight artworks, created by US
women of color during the period of Bridge’s inception—the late 1970s and
early 1980s. The artwork reflects some of the most radical expressions of
women of color resistance of its time. Of that era, Herrera Rodríguez states:

What had been missing in [the original] Bridge for me as an

artist, was the visual image constructed in a similar spirit; [one]
of resistance, opposition and outright revolt. In a different
‘language,’ but with equal commitment, the art works selected
here accomplish what Gloria Anzaldúa speaks of in her foreword
 to the second edition. They move us to “leave behind the defeated
image” and “the posture as victims.”1

In the appendix that follows, the coeditors’ forewords to the 1983

second edition have been reprinted, as has Gloria Anzaldúa’s 2001
foreword to the third edition.2 Also included are the biographies of the
writers and artists from 2015, along with biographies from the original 1981
edition.
They are well worth comparing, thirty-five years later.

Notes
1. Celia Herrera Rodríguez in “A Sacred Thing That Takes Us Home,” This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 2002), 279–287.
2. Moraga’s foreword to the 3rd edition is not included here, but appears in her collection, A
Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness (Duke University Press, 2011).
 Foreword to the Second Edition, 1983

Gloria Anzaldúa

¿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 las
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 abandonar ese autocanibalismo: coraje, tristeza,
miedo (let’s abandon this autocannibalism: 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). Dejemos de hablar hasta que 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 Revolución (enough of
passivity and passing time while waiting for the boy friend, the girl friend,
the Goddess, or the Revolution). No nos podemos quedar paradas 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 in
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
tabues; 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 commenced 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 hacen puentes al
andar (Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks).
Contigo,
Gloria Anzaldúa
 Refugees of a World on Fire
Foreword to the Second Edition, 1983

Cherríe Moraga

I try to imagine the newcomer to Bridge. What do you need to know? I

have heard from people through letters and travel 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 reintroduction should come from the voices of the
women of color who first discovered the book:

The women 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
expressing … The 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.1

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 in 1983, instead of
1979, it would speak much more directly now to the relations between
women and men of color, both gay and heterosexual. In response to a
proliferation of writings by women of color up until 1980, which in the
name of feminism focused almost exclusively on heterosexual relations
(either by apologizing for or condemning the sexism of Third World men),
Bridge intended to make a clean break from that phenomenon.2 So, we
created a book which concentrated on relationships among women.
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 encouraged by the organizing potential between
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 US grows in enormous
proportions, as we begin to see ourselves all as refugees of a world on fire:

The US 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
hard-hit are often the Indigenous peoples of those lands).
Pinochet escalates political repression in Chile.
The US 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 US? The Reagan administration daily drains us of
nearly every political gain made by the feminist, Third World, and
anti-war work of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

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 have the special circumstances of their 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?
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, qué
valen mis palabras?3 This is especially true for Third World women
writers, who know full well our writings 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 literate of our people and the people they touch. We even
write 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.
I must confess that at the time of this writing, however, I am feeling
more defeated 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 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. The idea of Third World feminism has proved to be
much easier between the covers of a book than between real live women.
Today the dream feels more remote, but this is precisely when the real work
begins.
Recently, I have seen Third World women activists tear ourselves apart
over the fact that we live in the most imperialist nation on the globe; and as
educated people, we hold relative privilege; not only here, but especially in
relation to the poverty of the Third World, engendered by the same US
imperialism. (As a light-skinned woman, I must say this unreservedly.) The
painful recognition of this contradiction is, I believe, the source of much
confusion and strife among us as feminists and activists.
I worry about a tendency in the movement where Third World
feminism becomes confused with Marxist-line party politics with a “focus
on women.” I worry when the most essential element of feminism, “the
personal is political,” begins to fade fast from our dealings with each other.
Because when that happens, and history has proven this, the first to go is
the right to our sexuality and with that goes lesbian rights.
Because one would not necessarily go into a Salvadoreño refugee
camp espousing her lesbianism, does this mean that homophobia is not a
problem in the Left, among heterosexual feminists, among Third World
men, on the street? Does this mean that homophobia is not a deterrent to
successful coalition-building in the US? Because families are being torn
apart by apartheid in South Africa, does this mean that a Black woman
should not bring up over the dinner table or in the political meeting that she
has felt humiliated or mistreated by her husband, lover, or comrade? If we
are interested in building a movement that will not constantly be subverted
from the inside at every turn, then we build from the inside out, not the
other way around. Coming to terms with the suffering of others has never
meant looking away from our own.
And yet, it is true that our oppression is not the be-all and end-all. I
worry about the tendency in the movement where women of color activists
seem to be enamored with our own oppression. Where class and the actual
material conditions of our lives are not taken into account even in
examining the very politics we do. Who are we reaching? I worry about the
tendency of racial/cultural separatism amongst us where we dig in our heels
against working with groups outside our own particular race/ethnicity. This
is what we have accused white people of, basically sticking to their own
kind—only working politically where they feel “safe” and “at home.” But
the making of a political movement has never been about safety or feeling
“at home.” (Not in the long run, anyway.) Cultural identity—our right to it
—is a legitimate and basic concern for all women of color. As Judit
Moschkovich writes, “Without it I would be an empty shell …” (76). But to
stop there only results in the most limiting of identity politics: “If I suffer it,
it’s real. If I don’t feel it, it doesn’t exist.” If politics is about feeling—
which feminism has rightfully politicized—then we need to expand our
capacity to feel clear through and out of our own experience as well.
If my major concerns (or worries) seem in opposition to each other,
they remain so only from the most superficial perspectives. What threatens
our movement in each of these situations is our refusal to acknowledge that
to change the world, we have to change ourselves—even sometimes our
most cherished, block-hard convictions. 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 still bind us together, I think it does so
most powerfully in the words of Kate Rushin, when she states:

“stretch … or die.”
—Cherríe Moraga

Notes
1. Alma Ayala, a nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican, from a letter to Gloria Anzaldúa.
2. Conditions 5: The Black Women’s Issue edited by Lorraine Bethel and Barbara Smith in 1979
was a major exception.
3. Face to face with the enemy, what good are my words?
 Counsels from the Firing …
Past, Present, Future
Foreword to the Third Edition, 2001

Gloria Anzaldúa

With this edition we commemorate the twenty-first anniversary of This

Bridge Called My Back. Despite its intermittent out-of-print status it has
weathered the generations well. It validated and still verifies many of our
experiences, still confirms our realities. Bridge created a reflective and
passionate space for discussion by representing many of our diverse faces.
It continues to be a refuge, linking us with each other, renewing old
connections among women of color, and prompting alliances with the
younger generations of women and with women and men of other tribes
and continents. Social movements cross borders—ours is no different. Like
a stone thrown into a pool, this book’s ripples have touched people on
numerous shores, affecting scholars and activists throughout the world.
We look back to the last two decades with a sense of accomplishment,
of having found, gathered, or created not just one community but many—
grassroots activists, scholars, teachers, queers. Some of these pueblos are
not just those of color, not just those of women. It forces whites to examine
their own privilege, racism, and blank (blind) spots, as well as their
histories and ethnicities. Yet despite Bridge’s great impact on international
feminisms, despite the discussions it has provoked, the theories it has
inspired feminists of color to generate, the activist organizations it has
motivated, despite its growing legacy, there’s even more work to be done.
Though the roots of contemporary feminisms of color have spread through
distant soils, the struggles of some activists are still unknown to those who
theorize feminist work, the voices of other marginalized peoples are still
absent from this and other anthologies. Yes, collectively we’ve gone far, but
we’ve also lost ground—affirmative action has been repealed, the borders
have been closed, racism has taken new forms and it’s as pervasive as it was
twenty-one years ago. Some of the cracks between the worlds have
narrowed, but others have widened—the poor have gotten poorer, the
corporate rich have become billionaires. New voices have joined the debate,
but others are still excluded. Lesbians feature prominently in Bridge but our
role has been downplayed. Though it’s queer folk who keep walking into
the teeth of the fire, we have not been given our due.
For the past years all of us have been fired in the kiln of daily trials,
traumas, raptures, and triumphs. We’ve surrendered to the white heat of the
furnace, our bodies, minds, and souls, the clay scored and transformed by
the blaze. Though wounded in the firing, bodies blistered, psyches cracked,
our souls have not exploded. Emerging red hot from la lumbre we’ve been
plunged again and again into the icy waters of adversity—fear, anger,
intolerance, hatred, poverty, violence. Como salamandras we’ve risen from
the pyre reborn, souls tempered with compassion. Among the ashes traces
of our roots glow like live coals illuminating our past, giving us sustenance
for the present and guidance for the future.
The seed for this book came to me in the mid-seventies in a graduate
English class taught by a “white” male professor at the University of Texas
at Austin. As a Chicana, I felt invisible, alienated from the gringo university
and dissatisfied with both el movimiento Chicano and the feminist
movement. Like many of the contributors to Bridge I rebelled, using writing
to work through my frustrations and make sense of my experiences. I wrote
an essay, with the pretentious title “Growing Up Xicana,” in an
autobiographical politically engaged voice rather than in the dispassionate,
disembodied language of academic discourse pushed on graduate students.
Much to my surprise this white man championed my writing. Later I taught
a course in Chicano Studies titled La Mujer Chicana. Having difficulty
finding material that reflected my students’ experiences I vowed to one day
put Chicanas’ and other women’s voices between the covers of a book. At
around that time a white gay male friend invited me to guest lecture his
class. The idea of el mundo zurdo—the vision of a blood/spirit
connection/alliance in which the colored, queer, poor, female, and
physically challenged struggle together and form an international feminism
—came to me in his class. Two years later in San Francisco while attending
a workshop by Merlin Stone, a working-class, spirituality-practicing,
goddess-loving “white” woman, I experienced subtle and blatant forms of
racism and classism from the white participants. With Merlin’s
encouragement I decided to compile a book of US Third World women’s
voices and, before leaving the workshop, composed a call for papers.
Months later I asked Cherríe Moraga to join me in editing the book. I was
seriously ill part of the time and without her the project would not have
been completed.
Without the writers who risked their work with two unknowns, who
risked revealing their vulnerabilities, this book would not have affected so
many in such deep, permanent ways. The energy generated by this
collection of “stories” proved to be an alchemical one, rendering the whole
greater than the parts. Without Toni Cade Bambara to “make revolution
irresistible” Bridge could not have gotten us there-here. Persephone, a
“white”/Jewish press, and later Kitchen Table Press, a woman of color
press, put to use all their resources to produce the book, and with this
edition, the third firing in the kiln, Third Woman Press, also a woman of
color press, has picked up the torch. Without las mujeres (y hombres) of all
“races” in the Bay Area, Boston, New York, and elsewhere who helped
promote Bridge it would not have become so widely read. Without the
readers who sustain the book’s wide-spread, multicultural roots, the ever-
increasing new generations of students, y las activistas who make our
visions a reality, this book would not have become a foundational text,
would not now be a site of creative dialogue and criticism.
Los consejos from the firing of the last two decades are many. The first
counsel reminds us that Bridge has multicultural roots and that it is not
“owned” solely by mujeres de color, or even by women. Like knowledge,
Bridge cannot be possessed by a single person or group. It’s public; it’s
communal. To exclude is to close the bridge, invite separatism and
hostilities. Instead we (Third World feminists) must invite other groups to
join us and together bring about social change. We must align ourselves
with and support those who challenge their own inherited or acquired
privileges, examine their social positions, and take responsibility for their
assumptions.
 To trust the other (i.e., whites) is hard when in the past they’ve
betrayed us, and when our very lives have depended on not trusting.
Though there are no longer pure victims or pure villains, differences in
power and privilege are very real. When power is unequal relationships are
conflicted—it’s difficult for dialogue to occur among individuals of unequal
power. Similarly it’s naïve to automatically trust others because they’re like
us and “belong” to the same categories. For the past twenty years, identity
politics have been extremely useful, but they too are constraining. We need
new strategies, new conceptions of community.
From this vantage point of greater conocimiento we recognize otro
consejo del fuego—the rhetoric of racial categories imposed on us is partial
and flawed and only serves to cage us in “race” and class-bound spaces.
Subtle forms of political correctness, self-censorship, and romanticizing
home racial/ethnic/class communities imprison us in limiting spaces. These
categories do not reflect the realities we live in, and are not true to our
multicultural roots. Liminality, the in-between space of nepantla, is the
space most of us occupy. We do not inhabit un mundo but many, and we
need to allow these other worlds and peoples to join in the feminist-of-color
dialogue. We must be wary of assimilation but not fear cultural mestizaje.
Instead we must become nepantleras and build bridges between all these
worlds as we traffic back and forth between them, detribalizing and
retribalizing in different and various communities. The firing has
bequeathed us el conocimiento (insight) that humans and the universe are in
a symbiotic relationship, that we live in a state of deep interconnectedness
en un mundo zurdo (a left-handed world). We are not alone in our struggles,
and never have been. Somos almas afines and this interconnectedness is an
unvoiced category of identity.1 Though we’ve progressed in forging el
mundo zurdo, especially its spiritual aspect, we must now more than ever
open our minds to others’ realities.
It is risky to venture outside the confines of our color, class, gender
and sexuality, as it is to make alliances with others who do not fit into the
categories of our self-identity. One of the biggest risks is isolation from the
group with which we identify. One experience I had with this was when I
was attacked by straight Chicanas at the 1984 NACS conference in
Ypsilanti, Michigan and was accused of being more concerned with
orgasms and the lesbian movement than with helping La Raza. Often
ostracism gives us a way out of the isolation—daring to make connections
with people outside our “race” necessitates breaking down categories.
Because our positions are nos/otras, both/and, inside/outside, and inner
exiles—we see through the illusion of separateness. We crack the shell of
our usual assumptions by interrogating our notions and theories of race and
other differences. When we replace the old story (of judging others by race,
class, gender, and sexual groupings and using these judgments to create
barriers), we threaten people who believe in clearly defined mutually
exclusive categories. The same hands that split assumptions apart must also
span the cracks, must wield the mutual exchange of stories. The solution is
not exclusivity and dominance, but receptivity to new theories, stories,
visions. We must surrender our privilege, scant though it may seem. We
must hold out our manos to others and share our gains.
The primary counsel from the firing is that change, that swift-footed
salamandra, is our only option. We either move or petrify. Change requires
great heat. We must turn the heat on our own selves, the first site of
working toward social justice and transformation. By transforming the
negative perceptions we have of ourselves we change systems of oppression
in interpersonal contexts—within the family, the community—which in turn
alters larger institutional systems. In challenging our own negative,
unconscious assumptions of self-identity we make ourselves so
uncomfortable we’re forced to make changes. Our images/feelings/thoughts
have to be conflicted before we see the need for change. Restoring dignity
and overcoming a stigmatized status changes our self-image; changes in the
self lead to changes in the categories of identity, which in turn precipitate
changes in community and traditions.
Using imagination (images/feelings/thoughts), love, and vision to
implement change is another counsel from the firing. Imagination links us
with what lives outside of us. Like radio waves our thoughts/consciousness
travel on air and impact others. Imagination offers resolutions out of the
conflict by dreaming alternative ways of imaging/feeling/thinking. For
positive social change to happen we need to envision a different reality,
dream new blueprints for it, formulate new strategies for coping in it. But
because change, positive and negative, is always a source of tension,
because it has no sense of closure, of completion, we resist it. We must be
motivated by love in order to undertake change—love of self, love of
people, love of life. Loving gives us the energy and compassion to act in the
face of hardship; loving gives us the motivation to dream the life and work
we want. To help me “dream” this foreword I spread the Medicine Cards
and pulled horse, the power that brings visions. This book is our horse; it
carries our messages, our gifts to the people.
A final counsel from the firing is that awareness of spirit, el
conocimiento of the links of carne y hueso, the bonds of suffering lie behind
all our acts, not just those of compassion and vision. Spiritual awareness is
on the rise; humans are turning inward, looking at what’s behind the eye as
well as in front. A spiritual understanding of humanity’s role in the universe
is now required of us. Before, this radical change in consciousness, this
burgeoning of a worldwide spiritual activism, this common cause among
the world’s peoples, this paradigm shift, was a dream—now it’s a necessity.
Our work of casting a spiritual light on the bridge enables us to venture into
unknown territories. It prepares us to fortify the old bridges, build new
ones, and cross these when we come to them. It will help us deal with new
life trials, awaken the young women and men from post-feminist
sleepwalking, and rouse us older folk who have become complacent and
apathetic.
In this millennium we are called to renew and birth a more inclusive
feminism, one committed to basic human rights, equality, respect for all
people and creatures, and for the earth. As keepers of the fire of
transformation we invite awareness of soul into our daily acts, call richness
and beauty into our lives; bid spirit to stir our blood, dissolve the rigid walls
between us, and gather us in. May our voices proclaim the bonds of bridges.

Contigo en la lucha,
Gloria Anzaldúa
November 2001

Note
1. AnaLouise Keating, ed., Interviews/Entrevistas (New York: Routledge, 2000), 164.
 Biographies of Contributors

Writers

Norma Alarcón. Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley. Publisher, Third

Woman Press, 1979–2004. Has published multiple essays on Chicanas and
other women of color in the USA, as well as a book on Mexican writer
Rosario Castellanos. She currently resides in San Antonio, Texas.

Gloria Anzaldúa. Born in the Río Grande Valley of south Texas, Gloria
Evangelina Anzaldúa was an independent scholar, cultural theorist, creative
writer, and nepantlera spiritual activist who made lasting contributions to
numerous academic fields, including Chicana studies, composition studies,
feminism and feminist theory, literary studies, queer theory, and women’s
studies. Anzaldúa’s work spans multiple genres, including poetry,
theoretical and philosophical essays, short stories, innovative
autobiographical narratives, and children’s books. She is the author, editor,
or co-editor of numerous books, including Borderlands/La Frontera: The
New Mestiza (1987); Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative
and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (1990);
Interviews/Entrevistas (2000); this bridge we call home: radical visions for
transformation (2002); and two bilingual children’s books: Friends from the
Other Side/Amigos del otro lado (1993) and Prietita and the Ghost
Woman/Prietita y la Llorona (1997). Her posthumous publications include
The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (2009) and Light in the Dark/Luz en lo
oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (2015). Anzaldúa died in
May 2004 from diabetes-related complications.

Toni Cade Bambara was born March 25, 1939. She edited two
anthologies, The Black Woman (1970) and Tales and Short Stories for Black
Folk (1971); wrote the short story collections Gorilla, My Love (1972) and
The Seabirds Are Sill Alive (1977); and the novel The Salt Eaters (1980).
Bambara succumbed to colon cancer December 9, 1995, and her collection
of essays and interviews, Deep Sighting and Rescue Missions (1996), and
novel Those Bones Are Not My Child (1999) were published posthumously.

Barbara Cameron (Lakota, 1954–2002) was a photographer, poet, writer,

and a nationally recognized political activist. She was born in Fort Yates,
North Dakota and was raised, primarily by her grandparents, on the
Standing Rock Reservation. Barbara attended the American Indian Art
Institute in Sante Fe, New Mexico, majoring in photography and film and
then moved to San Francisco in 1973 where she became fully immersed as
an organizer around Gay and Native concerns. In 1975, she cofounded Gay
American Indians, and she co-produced the Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day
from 1981 to 1985. In 1986 she traveled in a women’s delegation to
Sandinista Nicaragua and in 1988 served as a Jesse Jackson delegate to the
Democratic National Convention. Her four years as the Executive Director
of Community United Against Violence, among many other organizing
efforts, garnered her the Harvey Milk Award for community service in
1992. Barbara will also be remembered as a human being of humble heart
and of the highest integrity.

Andrea Ruth Ransom Canaan holds an MFA from the University of San
Francisco. She is completing a memoir, The Salt Box House on Bayou
Black. It tells of generational transmission of trauma passed from a mother
to daughter and so on. It is her journey of being raised in a close, loving,
spiritual, and activist community in New Orleans, Louisiana and her
passage through madness during and after being sexually molested and
abused by a very powerful minister during the heart of the civil rights
movement. She is a full-time writer and resides with her partner in San
Francisco, California.

Jo Carrillo, JD/JSD, is a professor of law at the University of California,

Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco, where she is the first woman
of color to have joined the tenured faculty. She is also: a former research
fellow at The Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC Berkeley; a
former visiting professor at Stanford Law School; and a past recipient of the
UC Hastings Research Chair. Her contribution to This Bridge was written
when she was an undergraduate at Stanford University. As an
interdisciplinary scholar, Carrillo is interested in how artists discuss and
incorporate law into their creative work and, more generally, in how
literature serves as a public record of the oppression individuals experience
in society. As a literary writer, she is ever interested in improving her vision
and her craft.

Chrystos. My books are: Not Vanishing; Dream On; In Her I Am (Lesbian

Erotica); Fire Power (available from my PO Box 4663 Rolling Bay, WA
98061); Wilder Reis (German translation); Red Rollercoaster; Fugitive
Colors (order from Cleveland State Poetry Center). Gloria Anzadúa’s
support of my work continues to sustain me.

Cheryl Clarke. (b. 1947) is the author of four books of poetry, a critical
work, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement, and a
volume of her collected writing, The Days of Good Looks: Prose and
Poetry 1981 to 2005. Her writing also appears in Signs: A Journal of
Women in Culture and Society (Summer, 2010), celebrating the 25th
anniversary of Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, another
iconic women of color text. Clarke retired from Rutgers University in 2013
after 41 years. She and her lover, Barb Balliet, co-own Blenheim Hill Books
in Hobart, NY, the Book Village of the Catskills. They are organizers of the
annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers.

Gabrielle Daniels received her MFA in English from the University of

California, Irvine in 1999. She’s been the recipient of a Ludwig Vogelstein
grant in 2004, and the Carl Djerasi Fellowship from the University of
Wisconsin Creative Writing Institute in Madison in 2005. Gabrielle was a
witness to the first stirrings of what has become the Wisconsin Uprising.
She’s currently at work on a memoir of growing up in New Orleans and the
San Francisco Bay Area, and hopes to return to California to live and to
write. Gabrielle also writes a news commentary blog—“This Black Sista’s
Page”—that will soon branch out to feature book reviews.

doris davenport. i am still a writer, educator, and literary & performance

poet from the Appalachian foothills of Habersham County (Cornelia)
Georgia. i have earned degrees from Paine College (B.A. English), SUNY
Buffalo (M.A. English), and the University of Southern California (Ph.D.
Literature). Presently, i am an Associate Professor of English at Stillman
College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In December 2001, i published my eighth
book of poetry, ascent. i still think THIS BRIDGE is an important work and
i do “stand behind” my essay—i only regret that it is not more analytical,
longer, and stronger. Contact information: [email protected]. More
information: http://www.redroom.com/author/doris-diosa-davenport,

Mary Hope Whitehead Lee. “I was born and raised in san diego
California/the last big town before the mexican border.” She currently lives
in Phoenix, Arizona where she works for migrant rights, connecting African
Americans to this shared and common cause.

Aurora Levins Morales is a Puerto Rican Jewish writer, historian, artist &
activist. She’s the author of: Kindling: Writings on the Body; Medicine
Stories; and Remedios: Stories of Earth & Iron from the History of
Puertorriqueñas; and two books with Rosario Morales: Getting Home Alice
and Cosecha and Other Stories. She works with Sins Invalid and Jewish
Voice for Peace Artists’ Council, and lives with chronic illness in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Still here, still writing, still radical. Blogging at
http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/main-blog.

Genny Lim served in the San Francisco Art Commission from 1991 to
1995 on the Visual Arts Committee, as Chair of Community Arts and
Education Committee, and as Chair of the Advisory Board for the San
Francisco Writers Corps. She has performed in live and recorded
poetry/music collaborations with jazz greats—Max Roach, Herbie Lewis,
Francis Wong and Jon Jang. She has performed at jazz festivals from San
Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego—to Houston and Chicago. She has
been a featured poet at World Poetry Festivals in Venezuela (2005),
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina (2007), and Naples, Italy (2009). Her play
“Paper Angels” was performed in San Francisco Chinatown’s Portsmouth
Square to packed audiences in 2010 and won the San Francisco Fringe
Festival Top Ten Award for Best Site Specific Work. Her performance piece
“Where Is Tibet?” premiered at CounterPULSE in San Francisco in 2009
and was also performed at the AfroSolo Arts Festival in 2010. She is author
of two poetry collections, Winter Place and Child of War, and co-author of
Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910–
1940.
Naomi Littlebear Morena. We were all just kids drawing our lines in the
sand, which time has predictably erased. I work as I’ve always done. I raise
my [young] son. Mama is old but is good at sports. She plays guitar and
drums and sees the world through his eyes. I am grateful.

Audre Lorde (1934–1992), leader among women of color, was a well-

known essayist and poet who described herself as black, lesbian, feminist,
poet, mother and warrior. Through her writing and activism, she fought for
African-American and Lesbian/Women’s rights. Her work is lyrical and
socially aware, infused with lesbian consciousness. Her writing on the topic
of poetry challenges that it should not be a sterile word play, but a
“revelatory distillation of experience.” She produced ten volumes of poetry,
five books of prose. Among these are The Black Unicorn, The Cancer
Journals, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us, Sister
Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. She
was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1993 and co-founder of
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Audre Lorde died in 1992 after
battling cancer for fourteen years.

Cherríe Moraga grew up two blocks from the San Gabriel Mission, just
east of East Los Angeles. Her Mexican elders have all passed on, as she
continues to write in their name. Moraga’s published writings include:
Loving in the War Years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios (1983); The Last
Generation (1993); Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of a Queer Motherhood
(1997); and, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings 2000–
2010. Throughout the last twenty-five years, she has also written, directed,
and published for the theater, most recently, New Fire—To Put Things Right
Again (2012) and The Mathematics of Love (forthcoming). In 1980, Moraga
cofounded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press of NYC, with Audre
Lorde and Barbara Smith (herein) and others. Twenty years later, she
became a founding member of La Red Xicana Indígena, a national network
of Xicanas working in the areas of social justice, education & culture, and
Indigenous rights. Since 1996, Moraga has served as an Artist in Residence
in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies and in Comparative
Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. She calls Oakland,
California—and the family she raises there with her partner of nearly two
decades—“home.”
Rosario Morales (1930–2011) was a New York Puerto Rican living in
Massachusetts. She was a feminist independentista and communist since
1949. Over thirty years ago she broke a lifetime silence with her work in
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. With
her daughter Aurora Levins Morales she co-authored Getting Home Alive.

Judit Moschkovich is Professor of Mathematics Education in the

Education Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her
research focuses on mathematical thinking and learning. Her publications
examine algebraic thinking, classroom mathematical discourse, and
language issues in learning mathematics. Originally from Argentina, she
moved to the US in high school. Her mother tongue is Spanish, her
mother’s mother tongue was Portuguese, and her grandmother’s mother
tongue was Yiddisch.

Barbara Noda is a writer of Japanese ancestry born in Stockton, CA, and

raised in the Salinas Valley. Her first book of poetry was Strawberries,
published by Shameless Hussy Press. She lives in Northern California.

Pat Parker (1944–1989) was born in Houston, Texas. She moved to

Oakland, California in the early ’70s to pursue work, writing, and activism.
She worked from 1978 to 1987 as medical coordinator at the Oakland
Feminist Women’s Health Center, which grew from one clinic to six during
her tenure. Parker also participated in political activism ranging from early
involvement with the Black Panther Party and Black Women’s
Revolutionary Council to formation of the Women’s Press Collective. She
was engaged in gay and lesbian organizations and held positions of national
leadership regarding women’s health issues, and domestic and sexual
violence. She published several poetry collections including Child of
Myself, Pit Stop, Womanslaughter, Movement in Black and Jonestown and
Other Madness. Her work is included in many anthologies.

Mirtha N. Quintanales was born in Havana, Cuba, and immigrated to the

United States early in 1962 at the age of thirteen. She received a PhD in
Anthropology from Ohio State University. She teaches in the Latin
American, Caribbean and Latino Studies Program at New Jersey City
University in Jersey City, where she served as the director of the program
for nearly twenty-five years. Her work—short fiction, essays, letters,
poetry, and literary translations (from Spanish to English) have appeared in
a wide variety of publications. She is co-editor of and contributor to the
award winning Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Latina
Feminist Group, 2001, Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Current
projects include: research on the US Latino boom in media and the
performing arts; co-editing a book on home and the Latin American/Latino
experience, “Hogar, Dulce Hogar: Ideologies of Home and the Latin
American and Latino/a Experience” (working title, forthcoming 2014–
2015); and little by little, work on an original screenplay-turned novel,
“Fan” (working title).

Kate Rushin grew up in Camden, NJ, and the African-American town of

Lawnside, NJ. She holds degrees from Oberlin and Brown Universities and
has received fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown
and the Cave Canem Foundation. Rushin has read her poems on NPR and
her work has appeared in New Worlds of Literature (Norton) and Callaloo.
She has taught at MIT and Wesleyan University.

Barbara Smith. Through nearly four decades of work as a writer and the
editor of visionary collections of Black Feminist writings, now documented
in Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around (SUNY 2014), Smith has
played a groundbreaking role in opening up a national, cultural, and
political dialogue about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and
gender. Her titles include: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are
Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (with Gloria T.
Hull and Patricia Bell Scott); Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology;
Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement
Building; and, a collection of her own essays, The Truth That Never Hurts:
Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom. A resident of Albany, New York,
Smith also served two terms as a member of the Albany Common Council.
In 2005 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Beverly Smith was one of the authors of The Combahee River Collective
Statement in 1977. She has worked as a college instructor and a women’s
health advocate; and has written several articles on racism, feminism, and
Black women’s health, including reproductive rights.
Luisah Teish is the author of Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of
Personal Charms and Practical Rituals. She is an Elder/Womanchief in the
Ifa/Orisha tradition and founder of Ile Orunmila Oshun. She teaches at the
Institute for Transpersonal Psychology and the California Institute of
Integral Studies. Teish is a ritual theater director and global community
activist. www.luisahteish.com. www.ileorunmilaoshun.org.

Anita Valerio is now Max Wolf Valerio, having transitioned from female
to male in 1989. Published work includes a memoir, The Testosterone Files
(Seal Press, 2006), and poetry in Troubling the Line: Trans and
Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Trace
Peterson (Nightboat Books, 2013). Burned out on identity politics, Max
now identifies primarily as an individual, and a classic liberal. A book of
poems, The Criminal, is forthcoming in 2015 from EOAGH Books.

Nellie Wong. Author of four books of poetry, Nellie Wong’s latest is

Breakfast Lunch Dinner, Meridien Press Works, San Francisco, 2012. Two
of her poems are inscribed in public sites in San Francisco, where she lives.
A native of Oakland, her alma mater, Oakland High School, named a
building after her in 2011.

Merle Woo is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant father and an orphaned

Korean mother. She is a retired lecturer in Women and Asian American
Studies. Fired from UC Berkeley because she is a socialist feminist lesbian
and staunch supporter of student democracy, Merle won both a union
arbitration and an out-of-court settlement. She is a longtime leader of the
Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women, a published writer and breast
cancer survivor.

Mitsuye Yamada. Shaped by her wartime concentration camp experiences

during World War II, her activities as a writer, educator, and political
activist are interrelated by human rights, peace, and gender issues. She is
author of Camp Notes and Other Writings, a combined edition of her first
two books of poems and short stories (Rutgers University Press, 1998). She
was formerly board member of Amnesty International USA and served on
the Committee of International Development, which promotes and funds
development of human rights work in Third World countries. She is a board
member of Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience, an organization that works to
support and free political prisoners in the US. She was formerly Adjunct
Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of
California, Irvine. Now in her nineties, she is in the enviable position of
simply enjoying life with her large family that includes seven grandchildren
and a newly arrived great-grandson, Asher Philip Yamada-Harivandi.

Artists

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951–1982) was born in Pusan, South Korea.
Her family immigrated to the US in 1962 and settled in Hawaii. In 1964,
they moved to San Francisco, and the Bay Area became Theresa’s home.
Theresa Cha studied Comparative Literature, French film theory and
performance, and conceptual art during her ten years’ of study at the
University of California, Berkeley. She made her first return trip to Korea in
1979, and returned there again in 1981 to begin shooting the unfinished
film, White Dust from Magnolia. In 1980, she had moved to New York City
where she worked as an editor and writer for Tanam Press. She produced
Dictee and Apparatus. On November 5, 1982, Cha was murdered.

Celia Herrera Rodríguez (Xicana/O’dami) is a two-spirit visual,

installation, and performance artist, who teaches in the Chicano Studies
Program at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also an Adjunct
Professor at California College for the Arts. Herrera has shown her work
throughout América and Europe—from The Institute of American Indian
Art Museum to international conferences in Belgium, Ireland and Turkey.
Her work is housed in several private collections and museums throughout
the country. Herrera’s work is notable for its intricate conceptual
conversation with Mesoamerican and American Indigenous thought and
imagery. Since 2005, Celia Herrera has collaborated as the designer for the
premiere productions of Cherríe Moraga’s plays, including: The Hungry
Woman; Digging Up the Dirt; and New Fire—To Put Things Right Again.
Her drawings are also featured in Moraga’s A Xicana Codex of Changing
Consciousness.

Happy/L.A. Hyder is a fine artist working in color photography, mixed

media and installation. She is also a performer and writer. Visiting Lebanon
for the first time in 2010, her images hold a mythic quality of place with a
reality of resilience. The envisioning to production of New Country
Daughter/Lebanese American (herein) brought a great sense of
understanding and freedom to her exploration of racial identity, embracing
of feminism in theory and practice, and claiming a lesbian identity.

Yolanda M. López emerged from the Chicano Civil Rights movement in

the late 1960s. In the decade of the 1970s, she reconsidered the images of
women in popular Chicano culture, la Virgen de Guadalupe being one of
the most often cited. As a Chicana artist, feminist and critical thinker, her
work, often tinged with mild satire, proposes a critique of our visual
environment. She sees Chicano culture as fluid and negotiable.

Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) was born in Cuba and came to the US in the
early 1960s. She was a feminist minimalist and performance artist who used
her body, earth, water, fire, sand and blood in her art. Elements of Santería
were also transformed and integrated into her performance and installation
works, especially in Cuba. In speaking of her work, Mendieta states in the
documentary, Fuego de Tierra, “It is always about the search for origins.”
She died in 1985 after a tragic and suspicious fall from her husband’s 34th
floor apartment window.

Betye Saar was born in Pasadena, California in 1926. Her diverse

background includes African-American, Irish, Native American, Creole,
German and Scottish heritage. She calls her works “assemblages”: three-
dimensional, free-standing wall hangings made from natural or constructed
objects. Saar reclaims African-American history by restoring derogatory or
stigmatized images and enshrining them. Her goal is to show cultural
differences and universal similarities. Her interests in art and the context of
her work draw from personal experiences, historical events, and politics.

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie was born into the Bear Clan of the Taskigi
Nation, and born for the Tsinajinnie Clan of the Diné Nation. Exhibited
nationally and internationally, Tsinhnahjinnie claims photography and video
as her primary languages. Creating fluent images of Native thought, her
emphasis is art for Indigenous communities. She has been a recipient of the
Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, a Chancellor’s
Fellowship at the University of California-Irvine, the First People’s
Community Artist Award, and a Rockefeller artist in residence. She is
currently Director of the C. N. Gorman Museum and Associate Professor in
the Department of Native American Studies at University of California
Davis.

Liliana Wilson was born in Valparaíso, Chile where she began drawing at
the age of eight. As a young woman, she studied law, but quickly became
disenchanted after Chile suffered a military coup that lasted 25 years. She
immigrated to the United States in 1977 and pursued formal studies in art.
The drawing that appears in this volume, Los desaparecidos en el cielo (The
disappeared in heaven) represents the bodies of two people who washed
ashore in 1975 after they were tortured and thrown overboard from a ship
called “Lebu.” The military used the ship as a place to torture men and
women after the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government. The two
drowned, but their appearance on a beach became proof of the atrocities of
the military.
 Biographies of the Original Contributors,
1981

Norma Alarcón was born in Monclova, Coahuila, Mexico and raised in

Chicago. Will receive Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures in 1981 from Indiana
University where she is presently employed as Visiting Lecturer in
Chicano-Riqueño Studies.

Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa. I’m a Tejana Chicana poet, hija de Amalia,

Hecate y Yemaya. I am a Libra (Virgo cusp) with VI—The Lovers destiny.
One day I will walk through walls, grow wings and fly, but for now I want
to play Hermit and write my novel, Andrea. In my spare time I teach, read
the Tarot, and doodle in my journal.

Barbara M. Cameron. Lakota patriot, Humkpapa, politically non-

promiscuous, born with a caul. Will not forget Buffalo Manhattan Hat and
Mani. Love Matri, Maxine, Leonie and my family. Still beading a belt for
Pat. In love with Robin. Will someday raise chickens in New Mexico.

Andrea R. Canaan was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1950. Black

woman, mother and daughter. Director of Women and Employment which
develops and places women in non-traditional jobs. Therapist and counselor
to battered women, rape victims, and families in stress. Poetry is major
writing expression. Speaker, reader, and community organizer. Black
feminist writer.

Jo Carrillo. Died and born 6,000 feet above the sea in Las Vegas, New
Mexico. Have never left; will never leave. But for now, I’m living in San
Francisco. I’m loving and believing in the land, my extended family (which
includes Angie, Mame and B.B. Yawn) and my sisters. Would never
consider owning a souvenir chunk of uranium. Plan to raise sheep, learn to
weave rugs and blankets, and write in New Mexico.

Chrystos. Last year I moved to Bainbridge Island. I am living in a house

overlooking the water. I have chickens and a big vegetable garden. Prior, I
lived in the San Francisco Bay area, with the last four years in the Mission
barrio. I will be 34 this November (double Scorpio, Moon in Aries). I’ve
been writing since I was 9 and this is the first time I’ve been paid.

Cheryl Clarke. A lesbian-feminist writer who lives in Highland Park, NJ.

She has published poetry in Lady Unique Inclination of the Night, Second
Cycle (1977), a feminist journal of the goddess. She has published reviews
in Conditions V: The Black Women’s Issue (1979) and Conditions VI (1980).
Her poetry also appears in Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology (Persephone
Press, Inc., 1981).

Gabrielle Daniels was born in New Orleans, LA, but has lived most of her
life in California. She doesn’t miss gumbo as she used to, but “cooks” as a
member of the Women Writers Union of the Bay Area,

doris juanita davenport is a writer who lives in los angeles. she is a

lesbian and feminist, a devotee of yemaya and a believer in tequila. she was
born in cornelia, georgia; has a ph.d. (black literature) at the university of
southern california. moreover, she is obsessed with truth, period.

hattie gossett born: central new jersey factory town lives: northern harlem
enjoys: thinking conversating reading jazzing and opposing patripower
work herstory: mother’s helper maid cook wife barmaid waitress
forthcoming book: my soul looks back in wonder/wild wimmin don’t git no
blues.

mary hope whitehead lee i am/at heart/a gypsy recluse/who for the
moment/is a poet and a blues lyricist/i was born and raised in san diego
california/the last big town before the mexican border.

Aurora Levins Morales. I was born in Indiera Baja, Puerto Rico, in 1954
of a Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother, both communists. I have lived
in the US since I was thirteen & in the Bay Area for five years, where I
work as a teacher’s aide for pay & as a writer and performer at La Peña
Cultural Center for sanity and solidarity.

Genny Lim is co-author of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese

Immigrants on Angel Island 1910–1940, published by Hoc-Doi, July 1980.
She is the author of Paper Angels, a full-length play produced by the Asian
American Theater company of San Francisco in September 1980. She has
been a contributing editor to Bridge magazine, a national Asian American
quarterly, and a contributor to East/West newspaper. Her writing has been
published in California Living, Y’Bird, American Born and Foreign
(Anthology by Sunbury Press), We Won’t Move (International Hotel
Anthology by Kearny St. Workshop), Networks (Anthology of Bay Area
Women Poets by Vortex), Beatitude, Women Talking, Women Listening, and
Plexus, among others.

Naomi Littlebear. This has been no fairy tale. I hated gang fights, street
life, stumbling on dope, actin’ tuff, being poor, wearin’ second hand
inferiority complexes, smart-mouthed cholos and their Gabacho
counterparts. I rebuild my broken dreams in Portland, Oregon.

Audre Lorde. “I was born in the middle of NYC of West Indian parents &
raised to know that America was not my home.” Most recent work: The
Cancer Journals published by Spinsters Ink. She is also the author of The
Black Unicorn, a book of poems published in 1978 by Norton, along with
many other works of poetry and prose.

Cherríe Moraga. I am a very a tired Chicana/half-

breed/feminist/lesbian/writer/teacher/talker/waitress. And, I am not alone in
this. I am the first in my family to ever be published in a book. Of this, I am
proud for all for us. Los Angeles born and raised, I recently moved to
Boston after three hardworking and transformative years in the San
Francisco Bay Area. (Gloria convinced me to further note that I am a
libra/virgo cusp with the #6 [the lovers] destiny, just like her.)

Rosario Morales. I am a New York Puerto Rican living in Cambridge,

Massachusetts—a feminist independentist & communist since 1949. I
married, farmed in Puerto Rico, studied science and anthropology and
raised three children. I now break a lifetime “silence” to write.
Judit Moschkovich. I was born and raised in Argentina. My grandparents
were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. My parents and I
immigrated to the United States when I was fourteen. My greatest struggle
has been to be all of who I am when confronted with pressure either to pass
for American or to choose between being Latina or Jewish. I have been a
feminist for as long as I can remember.

Barbara Noda. A writer of Japanese ancestry. Born in Stockton, raised in

Salinas Valley. First book of poetry is Strawberries, published by
Shameless Hussy Press. Wrote a play called Aw Shucks (Shikata Ga Nat).
Writing a novel. Likes to climb mountains.

Pat Parker is a “revolutionary feminist because (she) wants to be free.” A

Black Lesbian Poet, her writing spans over fifteen years of involvement in
liberation struggles: the Civil Rights movement, the Black Liberation
movement, Feminism, and Gay Liberation. She is the author of four books
of poetry, including Movement in Black (Diana Press) which contains her
collected works. Pat lives and works in Oakland, CA.

Mirtha Quintanales. I immigrated to the United States on April 2, 1962

when I was thirteen years old, a Cuban refugee. Eighteen years later I’m
still struggling with the after-effects of this great upheaval in my life,
always wondering where is home. As a latina lesbian feminist, I am one
with all those whose existence is only possible through revolt.

Donna Kate Rushin lives in Boston, Massachusetts and works as a Poet-

in-the-Schools through the Artists’ Foundation. Her work has appeared in
Conditions 5, Small Moon, and Shankpainter. She believes that the fight is
the struggle to be whole.

Barbara Smith. I am a Black feminist and Lesbian, a writer, and an

activist. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1946 and was raised by a family
of Black women. I have been a member of the Combahee River Collective
since its founding in 1974. My writing has appeared in many Black and
feminist publications. I co-edited Conditions V: The Black Women’s Issue
with Lorraine Bethel and All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men,
but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (The Feminist Press)
with Gloria T. Hull and Patricia Bell Scott. I am now dreaming of making a
film about Third World feminism.

Beverly Smith. I am a 33-year-old Black lesbian. I grew up in Cleveland,

Ohio, in a family which included my twin sister Barbara, my mother,
grandmother, aunt, and great-aunts. Sometimes I get sick and tired of trying
to be a grown-up lesbian feminist which is why I still maintain cordial
relationships with my teddy-bears.

Ms. Luisah Teish is a writer, lecturer, teacher, performer and political

activist. Her most recent work is a collection of poems, Don’t Kill Is
Fattening. She is presently teaching Afro-Cuban Ritual Dance and Culture
in the Bay Area and working on a book on Women’s Spirituality. She is a
native of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Anita Valerio is a Poet. One woman attempting Reality in an increasingly

static delineated environment & the continuous bulwark of privilege, etc. I
don’t really believe in the goddess. Born Heidelberg, Germany, 1957—my
father was in the military so we lived all over the country. I grew with a
mish mash of rich cultures—very confusing. I am now learning to celebrate
the discontinuity of it all. Most pressing current concern: saving the earth
from nuclear & other destructions.

Nellie Wong is poet/writer/socialist/feminist/cheong hay poa born Oakland

Chinatown, thlee yip/American style year-of-the-dog-woman whose
feminism grows out of Dreams in Harrison Railroad Parks/1st
Organizer/Women’s Writer Union founding member/ Unbound Feet/
secretary to the spirit of her long time Californ’ forebears.

Merle Woo is a writer of drama and fiction, is a humanities lecturer in

Ethnic Studies/Asian American Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley. She is a feminist and the mother of Paul, 13, and Emily Woo
Yamasake, 17. Her work has been published in Bridge, An Asian American
Perspective, and Hanai, an anthology of Asian American writers.

Mitsuye Yamada is a second generation Japanese American teacher and

poet whose book of poems Camp Notes And Other Poems was published by
the Shameless Hussy Press in 1976. This collection includes poems written
during the World War II years in a concentration camp in Idaho, but her
later writings deal with issues concerning the Asian Pacific woman in the
US. She is a member of the Asian Pacific Women’s Network and is
currently teaching Creative Writing and Children’s Literature at Cypress
College in Orange County, CA.
 Credits

“Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision through Malintzin/or Malintzin

Putting Flesh Back on the Object,” copyright © 1981 by Norma Alarcón.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Acts of Healing,” copyright © 2015 by The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Literary

Trust. Reprinted by permission of The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Literary Trust.

“Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers” and “La

Prieta,” copyright © 1981 by Gloria E. Anzaldúa. Also appears in The
Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Reprinted
by permission of The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Literary Trust.

Foreword to the Second Edition, 1983” copyright © 1983 by Gloria E.

Anzaldúa, and “Counsels from the Firing …” copyright © 2002 by Gloria
E. Anzaldúa. Reprinted by permission of The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Literary
Trust.

“Foreword to the First Edition, 1981,” copyright © The Estate of Toni Cade
Bambara. Reprinted by permission of Karma Smith.

“Gee You Don’t Seem Like An Indian from the Reservation,” copyright ©
1981 by Barbara Cameron. Reprinted by permission of Linda Boyd-Durkee.
All rights reserved.

“Brownness,” copyright © 1981 by Andrea Canaan. Reprinted by

permission of the author.

“And When You Leave Take Your Pictures With You” and “Beyond the
Cliffs of Abiquiu,” copyright © 1981 by Jo Carrillo. Reprinted by
permission of the author.

“He Saw,” “I Walk in the History of My People,” “I Don’t Understand

Those Who Have Turned Away from Me,” “Ceremony for Completing a
Poetry Reading,” “Give Me Back,” “No Rock Scorns Me as a Whore,”
copyright © 1981 by Chrystos. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance,” copyright © 1981 by Cheryl Clarke.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Millicent Fredericks,” copyright © 1981 by Gabrielle Daniels. Reprinted

by permission of the author.

“The Pathology of Racism,” copyright © 1980 by doris davenport. First

appeared in Spinning Off. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“on not bein,” copyright © 1979 mary hope whitehead lee. First appeared in
Callaloo. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“… And Even Fidel Can’t Change That!” copyright © 1981 by Aurora

Levins Morales. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Wonder Woman,” copyright © 1981 by Genny Lim. Reprinted by

permission of the author.

“An Open Letter to Mary Daly” and “The Master’s Tools Will Never
Dismantle the Master’s House,” copyright © 1984, 2007 by the Estate of
Audre Lorde. From Sister Outsider, reprinted by permission of the Charlotte
Sheedy Literary Agency, Inc.

“Dreams of Violence” and “Earth-Lover, Survivor, Musician,” copyright ©

1981 by Naomi Littlebear Morena. Reprinted by permission of the author.
All rights reserved.

“Catching Fire: Preface to the Fourth Edition,” copyright © 2015 by

Cherríe L. Moraga. “La Jornada: Preface, 1981,” copyright © 2015/1981 by
Cherríe L. Moraga. “The Welder,” copyright © 1981 by Cherríe L.
Moraga.” “Refugees of a World on Fire: Foreword to the Second Edition,”
copyright © 1983 by Cherríe L Moraga. Reprinted by permission of Stuart
Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY.

“La Güera,” and “For the Color of My Mother,” copyright © 1981 by

Cherríe L. Moraga. Also appears in her collection, Loving in the War Years,
lo que nunca pasó por sus labios. Boston: South End Press, 1983. Reprinted
by permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York,
NY.

“I Am What I Am,” “We’re All in the Same Boat,” and “The Other
Heritage,” copyright © 1981 by Rosario Morales. Reprinted by permission
of the author.

“—But I Know You, American Woman,” copyright © 1981 by Judit

Moschkovich. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Lowriding through the Women’s Movement,” copyright 1981 by ©

Barbara Noda. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Revolution: It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick,” copyright © 1980 by Pat

Parker. Reprinted by permission from Anastasia Dunham-Parker-Brady, Pat
Parker’s daughter.

“I Come with No Illusions,” and “I Paid Very Hard for My Immigrant

Ignorance,” copyright © 1981, 1983, 2002 by Mirtha N. Quintanales.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Bridge Poem,” copyright © 1981, 1993 by Donna Kate Rushin. A

version of this work appeared in The Black Back-Ups, Firebrand Books,
1993. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Black Back-Ups,” copyright © 1983 by Donna Kate Rushin. A

version of this work appeared in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology,
Kitchen Table Press, 1983. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Tired Poem: Last Letter From A Typical (Unemployed) Black

Professional Woman,” copyright © 1979 by Donna Kate Rushin. A version
of this work appeared in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, Kitchen
Table Press, 1983. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“To Be Continued …,” copyright © 1993 by Donna Kate Rushin. A version

of this work appeared in The Black Back-Ups, Firebrand Books, 1993.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Across the Kitchen Table,” copyright © 1981 by Barbara Smith and

Beverly Smith. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

“A Black Feminist Statement,” copyright © 1979 Combahee River

Collective. First appeared in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for
Socialist Feminism, Zillah R. Eisenstein, editor. Monthly Review Press,
1979. Reprinted by permission of Barbara Smith.

“O.K. Momma, Who the Hell Am I?: An Interview with Luisah Teish,”
copyright © 1981 by Luisah Teish. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“It’s In My Blood, My Face—My Mother’s Voice, the Way I Sweat,”

copyright © 1981 by Anita Valerio; copyright © 2015 by Max Wolf Valerio.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

“When I Was Growing Up,” copyright © 1981 by Nellie Wong. Also

appears in The Death of Long Steam Lady. West End Press, 1986. Reprinted
by permission of the author.

“In Search of the Self as Hero: Confetti of Voices on New Year’s Night, A
Letter to Myself,” copyright © 1981 by Nellie Wong. Reprinted by
permission of the author.

“Letter to Ma,” copyright © 1981 by Merle Woo. Reprinted by permission

of the author.

“Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster: Reflections of an Asian American

Woman,” by Mitsuye Yamada, copyright © 1979 by Bridge: An Asian
American Perspective. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Asian Pacific Women and Feminism,” copyright © 1981 by Mitsuye
Yamada. Reprinted by permission of the author.