this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation [Paperback]

Gloria Anzaldúa (Editor), AnaLouise Keating (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415936829 | ISBN-13: 978-0415936828 | Publication Date: September 22, 2002 | Edition: 1

More than twenty years after the ground-breaking anthology This Bridge Called My Back called upon feminists to envision new forms of communities and practices, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating have painstakingly assembled a new collection of over eighty original writings that offers a bold new vision of women-of-color consciousness for the twenty-first century. Written by women and men--both "of color" and "white"--this bridge we call home will challenge readers to rethink existing categories and invent new individual and collective identities.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Modeled after This Bridge Called My Back (1981), this feminist anthology acknowledges the enormous contribution to feminist literature of the first Bridge and explores continuing challenges for feminist thought. Co-editor and contributor Keating notes that this book is not meant as a commemoration but intends "to examine the current status of multicultural feminist theorizing." The editors also acknowledge that this book is more academic and theoretical than the previous work. The anthology comprises poems, letters, stories, and essays from an array of writers of different races, nationalities, and sexual orientations, including men. The first section explores the impact of the earlier Bridge on feminist thinking and the personal lives of the writers. In later sections, contributors draw on personal experience to explore social ills such as racism, sexism, and homophobia, and the broadening of the feminist experience. Contributors include Evelyn Alsultany, Shefali Milczarek-Desai, and Max Wolf Valero. Readers interested in feminism and multiculturalism will appreciate the variety of contributors and viewpoints. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Reading this bridge we call home, which has more than 80 contributors, is like attending a late-night party with every noteworthy activist, professor, and artist you've ever met. The lives out its subtitle; it's hard to walk away from reading it without feeling changed. -- Bitch
this bridge we call home is a book that, like its predecessor, turns our ideas upside down, revisits the battlegrounds of identity politics, and pushes us to ask hard questions about ourselves and our communities...Anzaldua and Keating have created a daring collection. -- Daisy Hernandez, coeditor, Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism
If you're ready for some serious fare by some of the best women of color writers working today, this is a collection for you. -- Curve
From shouldering the traumas and dramas of life in the most powerful country in the world, the U.S., toward the creation of a different world--a sort of us/then and us/now--this bridge we call home is a step in gathering up and documenting our best thoughts about collected, difficult experiences. Diversity, difference, underlying pain, and gain, are revealed, spoken, and still, as in an earlier bridge, with a hope about speaking with the mainstream, the malestream, as well as the many more outside of either. An accomplishment, a brave, collaborative model for understanding the importance of both collected and collective experience. -- Deena J. Gonzalez, Chair, Dept. of Chicana/o Studies, Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles and author of Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880
Readers interested in feminism and multiculturalism will appreciate the variety of contributors and viewpoints. -- Booklist
this bridge we call home is a continuation of the voices, thoughts, and imaginings found in the first book and an addition of issues that have only recently come to light. It is a work that encourges all of us to envision new ways of seeing, new ways of doing, and new ways of thinking about that which surrounds us every day. I found it well written, enthralling, and very motivating. A masterpiece that is sure to influence our lives for years to come. -- Altar Magazine

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Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (September 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415936829
• ISBN-13: 978-0415936828
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs
  • #78 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Collections & Readers

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Dr. Keatings students weighs in, October 22, 2002

By 

Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation (Paperback)

This book was one of the required readings for our "Women of Color" course, and I found it well-written, highly engrossing and very inspiring.

Keating and Anzaldua have reunited to provide the long-anticipated sequel to "This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color"--with an expanded list of contributors including white women and men of all ethnicities.

The decision to include these groups was criticized by some women of color who felt the original book's importance was diluted through the agreement, but enhances reading and study of the raised issues.

Mixing both art and theory, the book actively seeks to both celebrate the differences of various groups while uniting them into one struggle for social justice. Because the journey to such freedom is inherently difficult and long, separatism is not a practical option for many of the contributors.

Indeed, separatism's short-term benefits of self-affirmation quickly finds itself limited through the reality people can/do have more than one subordinating characteristic and the interconnectedness of society at large. Each contributor's respective identities provide shielding and stress to varying degrees---the task is to work towards the day when all of them accept an individual as a whole.

To this extent, the contributors and authors also place a premium on personal care and rejuvenation. What seems like a misplaced concept in a much politicized text is a key piece of advice from seasoned activists. Recognizing and admitting the interconnectedness and pervasive nature of discrimination is critical, but it is impossible for any one person to save the world alone (let alone overnight) and nor should anybody feel pressured to do so.

Because the original book's contributors have become 'old friends' to many readers seeing themselves reflected in the pages, the editors were insistent upon including the voices of original contributors. Most interesting is Max Wolf Valerio (previously credited as Anita Valerio) who discovered his real identity as a man and underwent the requisite changes to allow external features to match internal identity. Valerio also found comfort in indigenous Indian cultures which have a more fluid concept of gender than the dominant Anglo society.

Also different is the noticeably increased percentage of academic works, as opposed to the more personal slant of the initial book. While part of this environment is (yes) due to the increased representation of those groups most likely to be in the much-exalted Ivory Tower, it is also due to women of color's increased presence in academia itself.

The book is marketed for women's/ethnic/queer studies, but it would also be an appropriate text for government/political science classes from the urgency which social change is presented throughout.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Multiracial feminism 20 years after "This Bridge Called My Back", January 31, 2007

By 

wildflowerboy (planet earth) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation (Paperback)

Overall this is a superb collection of contemporary writings and artwork by radical feminists on the intersectionality of various forms of social oppression. However, I do have a few minor criticisms. Unlike its revolutionary mother text, "This Bridge Called My Back", which was written entirely by women of color, "This Bridge We Call Home" includes writings by white women and by men. While I think that it's imperative that white women engage in anti-racist activism and men of all colors engage in feminist struggle, I do not think that this book was the appropriate place for them to interject their opinions. Furthermore, I was a little dismayed that most of the activism discussed in this book centered on campus activism rather than on street activism. While I do not wish to discount the university as an important terrain for political struggle, it would have been nice to read writings by feminists of color active in clinic defense, ACT UP, anti-corporate globalization protests, Queeruption, etc. Given the impact of AIDS on communities of color, especially among African-American women, I was a little surprised that the book did not include any voices by hiv+ women. Nor did it include any writings by incarcerated women, an unfortunate oversight given the devastating role that the prison industrial complex plays in the lives of many low-income women of color. One essay I really did not like was that by transman Max Wolf Valero. First of all, he bad mouths Leslie Fienberg because of hir "Marxist harangues". Unfortunately, this antipathy toward anticapitalist politics is reflected in his rigid definition of transgenderism. For example, he dismisses transmen who do not undergo sex reassignment surgey as not authentically trans. To me, this reeks of classism. Living in a small, working-class town, I know several transgender women who have not had the operation simply because they cannot afford to do so. However, they live 24/7 as women. Should they be considered just men in drag because they do not have the economic means to reconfigure their bodies medically? I think not. To do so would be both arrogant and absurd. These criticisms aside, this book is a worthwhile read for present day activists interested in multicultural feminist concerns. I would however recommend reading "This Bridge Called My Back" first. Sadly, it is out of print, but you may be able to find a used copy online. Hopefully, some progressive publishing company will someday reprint this life-changing book!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Powerful Book!, November 29, 2007

By 

Amy Hartman - See all my reviews
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This review is from: this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation (Paperback)

In the anthology, "this bridge we call home", we see the passionate, explicit, and life-changing stories of women and men of all races, sexual orientations, religions, and ethnicities. This book along with its "mother text" of "This Bridge Called My Back" has been very successful in allowing "absent" groups in the feminist movement to have a voice and an opinion when they were overlooked, or simply ignored before. In the preface of this book, one of the editors, Gloria Anzaldua, discusses the meaning of a bridge in these books. The metaphor of a bridge is used to describe the efforts of people involved with social change to reach out, accept, and embrace people who are different from them. It is only when we build bridges with others and thus, connect with other people that we can truly see a radical transformation in society. Anzaldua's main purpose of this book is for all people to be able to "imagine a reality that differs from what already exists."
In the introduction by AnaLouise Keating, the reader is given a timeline of events in creating this second anthology. Keating discusses the trials and tribulations that the editors had to go through in creating this book. She also discusses the editors' idea of having people from many different groups contribute to this book as opposed to the first book that only women of color contributed to. Keating also discusses the meaning of nepantla, which is a point where we're exiting from the old worldview, but have not yet entered or created a new one to replace it. A common theme throughout the book is whether or not people are able to exit from the patriarchal society in which they have always lived and enter a new society where everyone is seen as equals and treated fairly. Keating calls this the whole challenge of the book as she writes, "may this book challenge you to choose, challenge us to cross over." In the foreword, Chela Sandoval discusses the meaning of emancipation in terms of social change. She focuses on "emancipating citizen-subjects from institutionalized hatred, domination, subordination: it is a methodology of love." Whether male or female, black or white, homosexual or heterosexual, rich or poor, I think that all people can truly benefit from this book and the message that it offers to all of us in working towards the "progression of political, social, and spiritual movements for justice, peace, and love."