This Bridge Called My Back (3)

Reading assignment for Friday, February 24. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Choose a poem or essay from the anthology and decide what its theme and message is. How does the author see her position in feminism? What would she say the position of women of color is? What is her hope for the future?

7 thoughts on “This Bridge Called My Back (3)”

  1. I chose to go over Genny Lim’s, Wonder Woman, because it relates to the way I think about different races as a whole, especially women from different races. Lim’s message is one of togetherness and understanding; I believe that in her mentioning of some of the many types of women that are out there, she is trying to bring them together and remind her audience that these women often carry the same struggles;that in coming together, the burden can be lessened. The imagery of the working class women makes me think she sees that women of color are the ones that are found mostly in these positions (e.g. those that clean houses, are tired every hour of the day, make clothes for others). She might say that this is a result of women of color being often put down by their bosses or the women who don’t understand their daily strife.
    Her hope for the future, is an answer to her cry: “why must woman stand divided?”, that is, women must come together and stop building these “walls” that only serve to further add insult to injury. They must recognize that there are more similarities than differences, like dreams and ambitions. Diverse women must understand that if they find themselves “stretching their arms far above the clouds” there may be another woman, on the other side of the world, doing the same.

  2. The piece who told you anybody wants to hear from you? you aint nothing but a black woman! by Hattie Gossett is very personal because the reader gets an inside look into Gossett’s thought process. It’s very emotional too because she is not only combating racism but sexism as a black feminist writer. There’s an immense amount of pressure on her to fail. Her doubts and insecurities are not only something natural she feels but rather the internalization of patriarchy. However she reflects on it when she says “patripower days of long ago to keep me/us from doing what we know got to be done.” She faces multiple forms of oppression from society, her community and herself because she also has become her own worst enemy. In addition, there are many stereotypes that prevent her from accomplishing what she wants. Society highly sexualizes black women but since she’s a writer therefore, she is criticized for not conforming to it.

  3. One piece that was very interesting to me was Rosario Morales’ “We’re All in the Same Boat.” I think the focus of this piece really lies on an idea that I read about in one of my other classes, that idea that the oppressed become the oppressor. Rosario Morales focuses on the color of her skin and the social class she belonged to. She says that we use these as identifiers and use these as divisors. I agree with Morales because I believe that in today’s society we tend to see these things such as the color of our skin and our social class as the source from which we set our standards and meet expectations. As she says, we get these comments and remarks from different directions, but eventually we learn to conform into these comments, “What black people feel and smell like” “What white people do and deserve” “What real men are really like” and so on. Not only do we begin conforming into those that describe us, but we also start classifying individuals into these stereotypes and so on. Thus, as she suggests, we become the oppressors ourselves. Her title is very important, because when I first read the title, I thought it was about us all being on the same boat, referring to the way all these groups are oppressed, but in reality she speaks of us all being in the same boat because we are all oppressors. She says, “only some of us are victims of sexism only some of us are victims of racism [and] of the directed arrows of oppression, but all of us are sexist racist all of us.” While many identify themselves as the oppressed for being categorized into some of these stereotypes, we all use them, whether it be to refer to a positive thing or a bad one, we all use these to find some rationality behind the actions of others. For example, just the other day in class we were talking about how Asian children are always thought of as the smartest, and I think these kinds of thoughts are exactly what Morales speaks of. By expecting someone else to be the smartest, we conform ourselves to not being able to score that perfect score that they will achieve and we limit ourselves because we lower our expectations for ourselves because we kind of let someone else get the higher score. Whether we make positive judgments or negative ones, we use these to divide ourselves and therefore become part of the oppressor for the oppressed.

  4. I chose the poem “When I Was Growing Back,” by Nellie Wong. I feel in Wongs poem i could identify t different aspects of it. I felt I could agree with her first statement, “I now know that once I longed to be white”(line 1), because just like her I can tell you the ways. I was praised for my fair complexion, and many were therefore fooled to believe I was not Mexican. This then served as a safety net for me because as I was an undocumented student at the time, it made me feel that I was protected under a facade that didn’t let others know the truth. People believed I was everything from white american to Persian so when they heard me speak Spanish they were shocked to find out I was 100% Mexican. So I worked hard in school, made sure my English was better than that of a native born, I, just like Wong, was fond of “fitting into the group of smart children,” (line 18). These are just a few of the things I personally identified with. From it I was also reminded of references my professor would make to Tony Morrisons’s novel The Bluest Eyes, because the main character there longed to fit in and desired the blue eyes everyone else carried with them. But the most important part of the poem is the word “longed.” This word paints a picture of the messages society send our way, to Wong, the character in The Bluest Eyes, and to me, that we foolishly grow up believing until we finally realize we will never be that or part of that group but instead began to bloom into the true people were are suppose to be and accept every aspect of ourselves. I too longed to be white but now I don’t.

  5. In “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers” Gloria Anzaldúa speaks to other women of color writers encouraging them to continue writing that comes from within. Anzaldúa states “mujer magica, empty yourself […] [s]hock yourself into new ways of perceiving the world, shock your readers into the same […] [w]rite of what most links us with life, the sensation of the body, the images seen by the eye, the expansion of the psyche in tranquility” (Anzaldúa, 172). This is a letter directed to writers who are women of color and as she is writing she states the various ways in which she distracts herself from continuing to write because women of color are not encouraged to flourish as writers. I can relate to what Anzaldúa feels as she is writing this letter because I too get anxious to write when I have a big paper. My body becomes very tense, if I’m in my room I tend to get up a lot, or go to the kitchen and grab something to eat even though I may not be hungry. I think this nervousness comes from the fact that growing up I was not encouraged to even write for my own self. Writing was always done for others, for class projects, assignments, but I didn’t really practice expressing myself through writing by keeping a journal or diary as it is encouraged for fair-skinned girls who grow up in an upper/middle class environment. It’s not until I came to college and began taking Chicana/o Studies courses that I learned to appreciate and in a sense felt encouraged by Anzaldúa and other feminist writers to write from that which connects us to life, to our breathing.

    1. Even now, I have the same fear when I’m writing something new. I find your disclosure very touching.

      There’s nothing wrong with feeling anxiety and fear. It’s brave not to let it control or stop you. 🙂

  6. I chose the poem “The Welder” written by Cherríe Moraga. I especially like the last part where the narrator takes up the torch and becomes the welder. By doing this, the narrators take the power into their own hands. The whole poem makes me think about stories of women of color that worked in the war industry in California from the book “Abiding Courage” by Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo. To me it seems like the poem is telling us that we should take control of our lives so that we can change and shape ourselves how we want to be. I’m glad that she acknowledges that we are all different people or “melts” that came from the same rock. Yet even though we become malleable at different temperatures there is always the possibility that we can change to become fuse. We have to work and take control of ourselves in order to work together at becoming one group.

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