Customer Reviews

this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation

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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.

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!

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."

This book "This Bridge we call home" is an anthology written by many woman who talk about their identity, sexuality, racism, and experience. IT is the second part of the book "This Bridge called my back". Anzaldue and Keating were apprehensive as to how this book would reach the expectations of their first book, however the second book was just as successful as to reach those in need. "This Bridge called my back" talked about how feminism has changed lives in different places for men and woman. It also focused more on feminist theory and reached out to woman of color. It excluded experiences of men. However this anthology, "This Bridge we call home" brings out the character and struggles that woman in different countries and includes transgender men. From Arab-Americans, to Jewish woman, to African American woman, these women all identify with their struggles that have made them who they are today. These women and men talk about the experiences they have face within the American culture. Poetic writings are published where they talk about their bodies, parenting, social class, etc. Powerful words fill each page as each race and gender are brought to light in the darkness that they go through.
There's the Chicano son who wants to be accepted by his mother because of his homosexuality, and a struggle of a German and Indian woman who wants to fit in, and be part of the culture, and many more stories of trials and tribulations that both men and woman go through.
The book is divided into many sections to breakdown different issues such as sexual identity, feminism, lesbianism, social class, gender, etc. Each section reaches out to everyone who has faced oppression. Many of these women share these experiences to identify one another and seek equality. The title includes the word bridge. A bridge is a connection from one place to the other and this book focuses on connecting to one another. A voice is only heard when it is spoken and each of these men and women identify with one another once they hear a voice of another who has been in the same boat.
Anzaldue and Keating did a good job in making connections and building this "bridge" or as they called it an "opening" in this book. It was interesting to see so many diverse experiences all emerge together to identify with one another. This book definitely was able to take experiences that were so far apart, to building a bridge step by step to filling in that gap. Many woman of color, transgender males, lesbians, and those who were oppressed due to their identity confide in this novel and "bridge" their experiences together.

This book is an anthology that serves as a reference point for measuring feminist progress since This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. The two editors who compiled the book included voices from people who identify in many different ways, an extension of the original This Bridge which contained of writings only by women of color. Building upon the original The Bridge's invitation for women of color to develop "a transformative, coalitional consciousness, this book expands to create a place for many more voices: those of any sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc.
This Bridge We Call Home works to insist on the "radical interconnectedness" of being human. It promotes spiritual activism (spirituality that recognizes the many differences among us yet insists on our commonalities and uses these as catalysts for transformation). It urges readers to create bridges, cross borders, and connect with others. In the preface, Gloria Anzaldua asserts that "most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it's become a sort of `home'" (pg 1). The editors urge us to create spaces where no one is dwelling in nepantla.

Even without having read the first This Bridge, the anthology helped me gain an understanding of what feminist readers got from the first anthology.

I honestly did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I certainly did not appreciate it as much as I did the last one. The editors mentioned briefly at the beginning of the book that women of color are often accused of being "unable" to formulate academic or political theory and that the selections submitted to this book clearly disprove that statement.
Personally, I've known a variety of women of color who can create and quote academic theory in ways that blow my mind, so I wasn't super shocked to learn about this.
However, although women of color can obviously 'be academic' to whatever degree we choose, that does not necessarily mean we really should be.
This book came off like trying to prove to white folks that yes, we might have been angry and upset in the past at our exclusion from white women's version of feminism and the fact folks of color are still getting murdered at the hands of white folks with little punishment [Oscar Grant comes to mind], but some of us have seen the light and are all reformed now!!
Isn't it great to pretend to be like white people? Doesn't that always succeed in making us happy? That seems to be the suggestion subtly made by the book. As long as we claim some inner knowledge of oppression, it doesn't matter that we're taking in six figures a year to basically pretend racism doesn't exist and play tokens to primarily white administrations on college campuses. It doesn't matter that many if not most students of color who manage to get to universities at all suffer from depression, anxiety, and a variety of other emotional disorders that tend to afflict people who feel with good reason constantly afraid for their lives on the one hand and their sanity on the other. It doesn't matter that we've taken 'belonging' according to the white folks' definition of it, or that we've forgotten the traditions we've come from in the name of 'pursuing the best possible futures' for our people...doesn't matter that those 'best possible futures' inevitably seem to equate 'making as much money as possible.' Doesn't seem to matter that the reason many women of color activists have resisted academic theory has to do with personal choice rather than inability and that this is something white folks will never believe anyway, and that thus can never be proven to them. It doesn't matter that the only way for us to move forward is to do so intact, with our roots well-maintained and dug deep in the soil of our cultures.
We cannot always be the bridge between our own cultures and white folks, we just wind up getting trod upon. Academia is not a bridge, and anyone who has spent any amount of time present on a college campus really ought to know that. Academia
It would be one thing if this were a book written by one person or even a group of people deliberately trying to convince white folks not to see us as a threat. It's not. It's a book aimed at people of color, trying to convince US to see ourselves as unthreatening and able to slip right into the white world with a minimum of problems--none that are really unsolvable or that really much matter, anyway. It's a book about trying to make us forget that we do in fact threaten the stability of white society by existing, because to be a WASP by freakin' definition means to believe that all other cultures are inferior to your own and must be slowly eradicated for yours to keep on existing.
White women do not really believe that we cannot create academic theory, or that what we do create is inferior to their own. They do wish for us to believe this. Internalized oppression...and wow, it would be nice to read a book that talked about that for a change.
This book is not that book.
Why should I format the way in which I express myself or my ideas to reflect a cultural tradition not my own? I do not come from a WASP culture, why should I sound like them? Why can't they move across the bridge and work towards understanding my oral traditions of storytelling and poetry as more than just an 'oh look how cute' phenomenon? Why can't I communicate white people without surrendering my self-esteem and compromising my ability to love myself?
Most of all, why doesn't a book with so much promise attempt to at least discuss these questions? Why, instead, does it only speak to the academic success 'This Bridge called my back' has had as the part if most wants to emulate...instead of recognizing that the REASON this previous book was so successful is BECAUSE it was not a whitewashed version of women of color's words, but rather, the original, unadulterated thing?