THIS BRIDGE 'CALLEDMY BACK WRITINGSsy RADICAL WOMEN OF COLOR EDITORS: ~ CHERRIE MORAGA GLORIA ANZALDUA FOREWORD: TONI CADE BAMBARA ;f~ KITCHEN TABLE: Women of Color Press ~ New York Copyright © 1981, 1983 by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission in writing from the publisher. Published in the United States by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, Post Office Box 908, Latham, New York 12110-0908. Originally published by Peresphone Press, Inc. Watertown, Massachusetts, 1981. Also by Cherrie Moraga Cuentos: Stories by Latinas. ed. with Alma G6mez and Mariana Romo-Carmona. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983. -Loving in the War Years : La Que Nunca Paso Par Sus Labios. South End Press, 1983. Cover and text illustrations by Johnetta Tinker. Cover design by Maria von Brincken. Text design by Pat McGloin. Typeset in Garth Graphic by Serif & Sans, Inc., Boston, Mass. Second Edition Typeset by Susan L. Yung Second Edition, Sixth Printing. ISBN 0-913175-03-X, paper. ISBN 0-913175-18-8, cloth. This bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color / editors, Cherne Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua; foreword, Toni Cade Bambara. - 1st ed. - Watertown, Mass. : Persephone Press, c1981. [*] xxvi, 261 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. Bibliography: p. 251-261. ISBN 0-930436-10-5 (pbk.) : $9.95 1. Feminism-Literary collections. 2. Radicalism-Literary collections. 3. Minority women-United States-Literary collections. 4. American literature -Women authors. 5. American literature-Minority authors. 6. American literature-20th century. I. Moraga, Cherne II. Anzaldua, Gloria. PS509.F44T5 81-168894 810 '.8 '09287-dc19 AACR 2 MARC Library of Congress [r88)rev [*]-2nd ed. - Latham, NY: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, cl983. CHRYSTOS: "Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading," copyright ® 1976 by Chrystos, first appeared in Womanspirit, reprinted by permission. COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE: "A Black Feminist Statement," first appeared in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism. Zillab R. Eisenstein, ed . (New York : Monthly Review Press, 1979), reprinted by permission. DORIS DAVENPORT: ~The Pathology of Racism," copyright © 1980 by Doris Davenport, first appeared in Spinning Off. reprinted by permission. HATTIE GOSSETT: "billie lives! biUie lives! ," copyright ® 1980 by Hattie Gossett; "who told you anybody wants to hear from you? you ain't nothing but a black woman!," copyright © 1980 by Hattie Gossett. MARY HOPE LEE: "on not being," copyright © 1979 by Mary Hope Lee, first appeared in Callaloo, reprinted by permission. AUDRE LORDE: "An Open Letter to Mary Daly," copyright © 1980 by Audre Lorde,_ first·appeared in Top Ranking, reprinted by permission. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," copyright © 1980 by Audre Lorde. PAT PARKER: "Revloution: It's Not Neat or Pretty or Quick," copyright © 1980 by Pat Parker. KATE RUSHIN: "The Bridge Poem, copyright © 1981 by Donna K. Rushin. MITSUYE YAMADA: "Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster," copyright © 1979 by Bridge: An Asian American Perspective. reprinted by permission. ," -- - --­ ;-~~~---- - -=~--- ­ - . 164 165 , - "pretty little Indian girl!" Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To saving the:m ­ going to give them 3rd World Women Writers * back to her one day . * Gloria Anzaldua A woman who writes has power. A woman with power is feared. In the eyes of the world this makes us dangerous beasts. 21 mayo 80 Dear muj~res de color, companions in writing- . • Anna Lee Walters in The Third Woman - Minority Women Writers in the u. s. I sit here naked in the sun, typewriter against my knee trying to Dexter Fisher {ed.} {Houghton Mifflin, 1980} p. 109. visualize you. Black woman huddles over a desk in 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 smoul­ dering 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 ea,sy 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 immedi­ acy 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 ly~~g . We can't transcend the dangers, can't rise above them. We must go' through the01 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 main­ stream 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 'Originally written for Words In Our Pockets {Bootlegger: San Francisco}. the Feminist Writers' Guild Handbook. 166 Gloria Anzaldua Gloria Anzaldua 167 I all Chicano children were dumb and dirty. And Spanish was not 1 think, yes, perhaps if we go to the university. Perhaps if we taught in grade school. And Spanish was not required in High School. become male-women or as middleclass as we can. Perhaps if we give And though now I write my poems in Spanish as well as English I feel up loving women, we will be worthy of having something to say th~ rip-off of my native tongue. worth saying. They convince us that we must cultivate art for art's ,1 lack imagination you say sake. Bow down to the sacred bull, form. Put frames and metaframes around the writing. Achieve distance in order to win the coveted title No. I lack language. "literary writer" or "professional writer." Above all do not be simple, The language to clarify direct, n'or immediate. my resistance to the literate. Why do they fight us? Because they think we are dangerous beasts? Words are a war to me. They threaten my family. Why are we dangerous beasts?'Because we shake and often break the white's comfortable stereotypic images they have of us: the Black To gain the word domestic, the lumbering nanny with twelve babies sucking her tits, to describe the loss the slant-eyed Chinese with her expert hand - "They know how to I risk losing everything. treat a man in bed," the flat-faced Chicana or Indian, passively lying 1 may create a monster on her back, being fucked by the Man a la La Chingada. the word's length and body swelling up colorful and thrilling The Thir;d World woman revolts: We revoke, we erase your white male looming over my mother, characterized. imprint. when you come knocking on our doors with your rubber stamps Her voice in .the distance to brand our faces with DUMB, HYSTERICAL, PASSIVE PUTA, unintelligible illiterate. PERVERT, when you come with your branding irons to burn MY These are the monster's words. I PROPERTY on our buttocks, we will vomit the guilt, self-denial and race­ Cherrie Moraga 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. Who gave us permission to perform the act of writing? Why does I can write this and yet I realize that many of us women of color who writing seem so unnatural for me? I'll do anything to postpone it­ have strung degrees, credentials and published books around our empty the trash, answer the telephone. The voice recurs in me: Who nec;:~s like pearls that we hang onto for dear life are in danger of am I, a poor Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write? How dare I contributing to the invisibility of our sister-writers. "La Vendida," the even considered becoming a writer as 1 stooped over the tomato fields sell-out. bending, bending under the hot sun, hands broadened and calloused, The danger of selling out one's own ideologies. For the Third World not fit to hold the quill,·numbed into an animal stupor by the heat. woman, who has, at best, one foot in the feminist literary world, the How hard it is for us to think we can choose to become writers, much temptation is great to adopt the current feeling-fads and theory fads, less'feel and believe that we can. What have we to contribute, to give? the latest half truths in political thought, the half-digested new age Our own expectations condition us. Does not our class, our culture as psychological axioms that are preached by the white feminist well as the white man tell us writing is not for women such as us? establishment.