This Bridge Called My Back: Writings
by Radical Women of Color Cherríe
Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. (1981)
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical
Women of Color is a groundbreaking collection of
essays, poems, journal entries, and academic ar-
ticles addressing the central concerns of what has
become known as Third World feminism. Perse-
phone Press originally published This Bridge at a
time when divisions in feminism fell deeply along
racial and ethnic lines. Contributors voiced two
central critiques of mainstream feminist practices:
The social, political, and cultural gains were being
felt only by middle-class white women, and main-
stream feminists were making major unfounded
claims about the experiences and political concerns
of African-American, Asian-American, Chicana,
Latina, Native American, and lesbian women. In
their introductory essay, editors Cherríe Moraga
and Gloria Anzaldúa assert that the book’s inten-
tion is to “reflect an uncompromised definition of
feminism by women of color in the U.S.” In the
original foreword, TONI CADE BAMBARA notes that
This Bridge “lays down the planks to cross over
on to a new place where stooped labor cramped
quartered down pressed and caged up combatants
can straighten the spine and expand the lungs and
make the vision manifest.”
Moraga urges, after AUDRE LORDE, that each
woman of color “reach down into that deep place
of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror
and loathing of any difference that lives there.” The
writing of Norma Alarcón, hattie gossett, Naomi
Littlebear, Genny Lim, Lorde, Nellie Wong, Mitsuye
Yamada, and many others does just that. Alarcón,
for example, explores the possibilities of a matrilin-
ear pantheon of mythical cultural images, starting
with Malintzin, the Aztec noblewoman presented
to Cortes upon his 1519 “discovery” of Mexico.
Gossett imagines the possibilities of learning to
give voice to African-American cultural difference
in the beauty of a Billie Holliday vocal. Wong at-
tempts to relocate the cultural vibrancy of Chinese-
American women in the “confetti of voices” that
carry tradition and history through the works of
Maxine Hong Kingston, Jessica Hagedorn, Hisaye
Yamamoto, and others. Rosario Morales stresses
the importance of living with a difference within,
addressing the connections between Puerto Rico
and the United States, the working and the middle
classes, the “housewife and intellectual, feminist,
Marxist, and anti-imperialist.”
This Bridge has had at least two profound and
lasting effects since its publication. First, it has
inspired feminists to publish other collections of
marginalized literature, including Home Girls,
a collection of black women’s writing; Making
Waves, by Asian-American women; Food for Our
Grandmothers, by Arab-American women; and the
Native American A Gathering of Spirit. Also, the
loud call in This Bridge for an ethic of antiracism
and specificity in the practices and scholarship of
feminism has influenced feminist studies to focus
resources on issues of prejudice on the basis of
class, race, and sexuality. While the specific politi-
cal concerns addressed in This Bridge are a part of
history, the exuberant power of its language loudly
resonates in the present moment.
Keith FeldmanThomas, Joyce Carol (1938– )
After spending her early childhood through age
10 in Ponca City, Oklahoma, where she was born,
Thomas grew up in Tracy, a city in northern Cali-
fornia. She received a bachelor of arts degree from
California State University, San Jose, and a mas-
ters of arts degree in education from Stanford
University. Although she has taught at the middle
and high school levels, Thomas has spent most of
her career teaching at the university levels, includ-
ing at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
San Jose State College, St. Mary’s College, and the
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where, as a full
professor, she taught creative writing from 1989
to 1994.
Thomas is an award-winning poet, novelist,
short story writer, playwright, and author of chil-
dren’s books. Thomas’s first collection of poetry,
Bittersweet (1973), was followed by Crystal Breeze
(1974), Blessing (1975), Black Child (1981), Inside
the Rainbow (1982), Brown Honey in Broomwheat
Te a (1993), The Blacker the Berry (1997), A Mother’sThomas, Joyce Carol 493