This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

Chapter 1, “Children Passing in the Streets: The Roots of Our Radicalism,” sets the scene for the rest of the anthology, introducing the various perspectives put forth by the authors and the formative experiences that have set them on the path of radicalism. In particular, it brings to light the discrimination and invisibility that women of color experience as they move within their own communities and the wider Anglo-Saxon dominant society.

“When I Was Growing Up” by Nellie Wong begins the chapter with a familiar narrative—that of a woman of color, specifically the daughter of immigrants, who learns to hate that which sets her apart from being “American” i.e., white. She describes being Chinese as “feeling foreign, was limiting, was unAmerican” (6), and how having fair skin was beautiful and an ideal to strive for. This internalized racism that she absorbed growing up developed into self-hatred and a hatred for her fellow Asians and Asian Americans that she didn’t see clearly until she had grown older. Many immigrant families of this era considered assimilation a success, and several of the authors within this text and from this time frame allude to the loss of language and cultural heritage as parents avoided passing on traits that would encourage discrimination against their children.

Conversely, Mary Hope Whitehead Lee’s poem “on not bein” and Chrystos’s closing poem for the chapter, “He Saw,” speak to a craving for the trappings of an ethnicity that they identify with, but also have a complex relationship with. Whitehead Lee laments the pallor of her skin, being a very light-skinned African American woman, because she is discriminated against for being Black by white society, but she’s also bullied and resented by her darker-skinned peers. She finds all the shades of darker brown beautiful, while herself feeling “drab faded out / yellow like a scorched july sky” (8). Chrystos’s father is Native American, but he wants to give her “all the whitest advantages” (16), and so he separates her from her Indigenous roots, leaving her with her white mother in hopes of avoiding passing on the intergenerational trauma that haunts him. Unlike Wong’s experience of wanting to leave behind her Chinese heritage, Chrystos takes on the impetus to reconnect with her roots. By juxtaposing the narrative of a woman who wanted to remove herself from her heritage with women who want to connect to their heritage, Chapter 1 provides insight as to how their families and communities digest and respond to the inherent racism of living in the US.

Additionally, Cherríe Moraga’s poem “For the Color of My Mother” and Rosario Morales’s poem “I Am What I Am” give voice to the ways women celebrate their cultural heritage in America. Moraga pays tribute to her Chicana mother in “For the Color of My Mother,” valuing her as a woman of color and acknowledging the ways in which society silenced her. Meanwhile, Morales sings praises the multifaceted nature of her identity: She’s American, Puerto Rican, Jewish, and a New Yorker. Both poems address the complexity of identity, and while Wong was taught to dislike the parts of herself that were “unAmerican,” Moraga and Morales have come to own those aspects of their identities and hold onto them against the mainstream Anglo-American narrative that “white is right.”

Lastly, “Dreams of Violence” by Naomi Littlebear Morena reveals the cycles of violence that are perpetuated by a culture that is racist, classist, and sexist through her narrative from her youth about a gang of boys who beat her up on the street, and the violent response of her grandmother at her dirtied state. Coming from a family of immigrants, Morena’s family does not have the money to buy many clothes, and her grandmother does not extend empathy to Morena’s experience as a brutalized young woman of color on the street. In this poem, Morena learns how the “unAmerican” parts of herself are not just dislikable, as in Wong’s poem, but that they are dangerous and lead to violence both outside of and within her home.

These pieces that open This Bridge illustrate the ways intersectionality can play out in those early, formative years of socialization—a woman of color receives negative messages through the media and wider society about anything that is not white, male, “American,” middle class, or upper class. She can learn to despise herself and those like her, or she can learn to value her oppressed identities, and she can learn the danger in her identities. This section gives the reader an intimate look at how the writers’ beginnings could translate into the radicalism they grew into.