This Bridge Called My Back

"This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color" was a ground-breaking feminist anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. The anthology was first published in 1981 by "Persephone Press", and the second edition was published in 1984 by . [Short, Kayann. "Coming to the Table: THe Differential Politics of "This Bridge called my Back", Genders 19, 1994, pp4-8] The book is currently out in its third edition, published by Third Woman Press. "This Bridge" centered the experiences of women of color, offering a serious challenge to white feminists who made claims to solidarity based on sisterhood. Writings in the anthology, along with works by other prominent feminists of color, call for more a greater prominence within feminism for race-related subjectivities, and ultimately laid the foundation for third wave feminism.

"This Bridge" "offered a rich and diverse account of the experience and analyses of women of color; with its collective ethos, its politics of rage and regeneration, and its mix of poetry, critique, fiction and testimony, it challenged the boundaries of feminist and academic discourse."cite web
url=http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/archive/2003/01/highlt.html
title=The second time around
author=Heather Love
publisher=The Women's Review of Books: A feminist guide to good reading
date=January 2003
access date=2008-04-01 A review of "This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation" edited by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating. New York: Routledge, 2002.] "This Bridge" has become "one of "the most" cited books in feminist theorizing" (emphasis in original)Aenerud, Rebecca " [http://books.google.com/books?id=yCORLQBk1XYC&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=%22this+Bridge+Called+My+Back+and+the+Challenge+to+Whiteness%22&source=web&ots=Z0ZYpUVfy7&sig=7BDHQsItM91NM4MlEEIC0YGrpKI&hl=es#PPA69,M1| Thinking Again: "This Bridge Called My Back" and the Challenge to Whiteness] " in cite book
title=This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation
author=AnaLouise Keating
author2=Gloria E. Anzaldúa
year=2002
page=71]

Anthologists Moraga and Anzaldúa stated in the preface that they expected the book to act as a catalyst, "not as a definitive statement on Third World Feminism" in the United States. [Anzaldúa & Moraga, "This Bridge Called My Back", Persephone Press, Author Preface p xxvi] They also expressed a desire to "express to all women, especially white, middle class women, the experiences which divide us as feminists ...we want to create a definition that expands what "feminist" means. [Anzaldúa & Moraga, "This Bridge Called My Back", Persephone Press, Author Preface p xxiii]

Teresa de Lauretis noted that "This Bridge" and "All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies" (1982) created a "shift in feminist consciousness" by making "available to all feminists the feelings, the analyses, and the political positions of feminists of color, and their critiques of white or mainstream feminism."de Lauretis, Teresa "The Technology of Gender" in cite book
last=Rakow
first=Lana
last2=Wackwitz
first2=Laura
title=Feminist Communication Theory: Selections in Context
date=1987
page=221]

Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo, and Norma Alarcon adapted this anthology into the Spanish-language "Esta puente, mi espalda: Voces de mujeres tercermundistas en los Estados Unidos". In 2002, AnaLouise Keating and Gloria Anzaldúa edited an anthology ("this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation") that examined the impact of "This Bridge" twenty years later while trying to continue the discussion started by Anzaldúa and Moraga in 1981.

Contributors

*Gloria E. Anzaldúa
*Toni Cade Bambara
*Ana Castillo
*Chrystos
*Combahee River Collective
*Audre Lorde
*Cherríe Moraga
*Barbara Smith
*Beverly Smith
*Max Wolf Valerio

ee also

*Chicana feminism
*Black feminism
*Third-world feminism

References