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

Chapter 5, “Speaking in Tongues: The Third World Woman Writer,” highlights writing as a major tool for Third World women to protect and advocate for themselves. This concept builds from the previous three sections: now that the reader knows the roots of these radical writers, the white feminist’s racism they are working against, and the oppressions they are also combatting within their own communities, Chapter 5 provides one potential avenue of action for Third World women to take.

“Speaking In Tongues” by Gloria Anzaldúa and Nellie Wong’s prose piece “In Search of the Self as Hero” elaborate on what it’s like and what it means to write as a Third World woman.

“Millicent Fredericks” by Gabrielle Daniels and “Chicana’s Feminist Literature: A Re-vision through Malintzin/or Malintzin Putting Flesh Back on the Object” by Norma Alarcón reflect on the role of Third World women in literature historically as a means to contextualize contemporary writers. Gabrielle Daniels specifically gives an example of a women who could have been any of the contributors to this book but instead was an invisible member of society historically and is only known through the writings of a white woman. Meanwhile, neither woman could escape their oppression.

Norma Alarcón goes even further back in time to the archetype of a mythological woman who is a recurring theme in Chicana feminist literature, drawing parallels between the figure of Malintzin and the negative understanding of women and their sexuality. In contextualizing the role of women of color in literature and literary devices, Millicent Fredericks and Malintzin flesh out the roots of feminist literature in a world where such literature is mainly analyzed through white, feminist middle-class perspectives.

“Ceremony for Completing a Poetry Reading” by Chrystos expresses the joy and meaning of sharing her writing, equating it to a ceremony and healing act of empowerment. By providing the reader an abstract depiction of the power writing can be in the hands of Third World women, this poem offers another motivation for writing that has nothing to do with speaking out against external oppression and everything to do with the empowerment of the self in the healing from trauma and internalized oppression.