Cherríe Moraga - This Bridge Called My Back, Fortieth Anniversary Edition

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 anchorsand not only in the field of womens 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 manifestothe 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 Rodrguez, 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

Cherre Moraga

and

Gloria Anzalda

Cover art designed by Amane Kaneko

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2021 Cherre Moraga and The Gloria E. Anzalda 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 Cherre L. Moraga and Gloria E. Anzalda. 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. FeminismLiterary collections. 2. WomenUnited StatesLiterary collections. 3. American literatureMinority authors. 4. Minority womenLiterary collections. 5. American literatureWomen authors. 6. RadicalismLiterary collections. I. Moraga, Cherre, editor. II. Anzalda, Gloria, editor.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

para

Elvira Moraga Lawrence y
Amalia Garca Anzalda
y para todas nuestras madres
por la obediencia y
la insurreccin
que ellas nos ensearon.

for

Elvira Moraga Lawrence and
Amalia Garca Anzalda
and for all our mothers
for the obedience and rebellion
they taught us.

Cherre Moraga

Gloria Anzalda and The Gloria E. Anzalda Literary Trust

Cherre Moraga

Toni Cade Bambara

Kate Rushin

Cherre Moraga

Cherre Moraga and Gloria Anzalda

Nellie Wong

mary hope whitehead lee

Cherre Moraga

Rosario Morales

Naomi Littlebear Morena

Chrystos

Genny Lim

Cherre Moraga

Mitsuye Yamada

Anita Valerio

Barbara Cameron

Aurora Levins Morales

Chrystos

Jo Carillo

Jo Carillo

Chrystos

Mitsuye Yamada

Judit Moschkovich

Kate Rushin

doris davenport

Rosario Morales

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde

Rosario Morales

Kate Rushin

Kate Rushin

Barbara Smith and Beverly Smith

Cheryl Clarke

Barbara Noda

Merle Woo

Mirtha N. Quintanales

Mirtha N. Quintanales

Naomi Littlebear Morena

Gloria Anzalda

Gabrielle Daniels

Nellie Wong

Norma Alarcn

Chrystos

Chrystos

Gloria Anzalda

Combahee River Collective

Cherre Moraga

Gloria Anzalda

Andrea Canaan

Pat Parker

Chrystos

Cherre Moraga

Gloria Anzalda

Cherre Moraga

Gloria Anzalda

Celia Herrera Rodrguez

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie

Yolanda M. Lpez

Betye Saar

Happy/L.A. Hyder

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Liliana Wilson

Ana Mendieta

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 consciousnessthe 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 Anzalda 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 Martnez, 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.