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

This section provides insight into the experiences of women of color that underpins academic or theoretical views on race and gender. “Wonder Woman” by Genny Lim addresses her question of disparity among women, all the different lifeways of women that are separate and unequal, yet always joined by womanhood.

In “La Güera” Cherríe Moraga writes about the privilege she experienced having her father’s white skin. She contrasts it to her mother’s experience of poverty, being “poor, uneducated, and Chicana” in the US. When she feels the oppression stemming from her lesbianism, Moraga comes to realize the tension between privilege and oppression that she sees play out among people of varying identities.

In “Invisibility Is an Unnatural Disaster,” Mitsuye Yamada reflects on the invisibility she has experienced being an Asian American woman, pointing out how her parents taught her to behave in a way that would ensure others wouldn’t take her seriously. She emphasizes the importance of being more active in working against her own stereotypes.

In “It’s in My Blood, My Face—My Mother’s Voice, the Way I Sweat,” Anita Valerio, now Max Valerio having transitioned from female to male in 1989, writes about his experience being “half blood Indian and half Chicana” as well as lesbian, and the struggle between these identities as he tries to reconcile who he is with his heritage and the patriarchal societies he exists within.