Reading assignment for Monday April 16, 2012. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about both of the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
Cherríe Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness (79-162)
Based on your readings this semester on textual communities and print culture, what does Moraga’s writing reveal about the construction of communal texts, anthologies and performances? How much ownership do we have of our writing? How much debt to others? What do you think of Moraga’s decision not to contribute to This Bridge We Call Home?
On a more personal level, do you think Moraga is right about how she and Anzaldúa could have resolved their differences? Do you agree with her reading of Anzaldúa’s writing as having more to do with vision of the ideal than the more concrete politics of process?
Cherríe Moraga, “The Salt That Cures: Remembering Gloria Anzaldúa” is very much a tribute to her mentor and life long friend Anzaldúa. Although she reveals many secrets, intimate and vulnerable moments, it is the relative and only truth that Moraga knows because it isn’t until death people will learn the absolute truth therefore, there isn’t an universal truth and a right or wrong way to view life. I can see how people would have seen this as a form of betrayal or too personal but if Moraga did not write it, she would not be the Xicana Lesbian writer she is and her mentor encouraged her to be. This is the best way Moraga knows how to cope with grief and to work through the inner turbulence of emotions. Even though she admired Anzaldúa’s solitude and inner strength, she regrets the price Anzaldúa paid in return such as the resistance “to sex, intimate, touching, opening [herself] to the alien other where [she’s] out of control” (121). That resistance is an issue that has existed within the LGBT community due to the systematic and historical accounts of violence, e.g., rape, against them and women of color. Further, Moraga’s work never has been mild and neither is this piece because she talks about what others don’t discuss but can be very helpful for our community and future generations of Xicana/Lesbian writers.
Cherrie Moraga comments that her and Anzaldúa’s philosophy do differ in terms of actualizing it but not in relation to their heart and intent. They drifted apart because Moraga was not ready to emphasize an “inclusive” U.S. women of color feminist until groups “go home to [their] ‘tribes’ – [their] home cultures – and make progressive change there specific to [their] historical conditions” because there’s still a lot of reparation and healing that needs to take place before it can really be considered inclusive (126). Just like organizations like to claim diversity but neglect interculturalism which is equally as important. Something can’t be claimed until it reflects the reality. It is necessary for everyone to confront their past and their homes, which originally rejected them before attempting to begin fixing and healing relations with other communities. It is true that it first begins at home. I don’t think Anzaldúa should be idolized but rather seen as a sister and celebrated through her work because no one should she placed on a pedestal.
Moving to Chapter 4 I was again intrigued by the drawing she places at the beginning, The Corn Mother’s Return. After the picture came my favorite section of the reading for today’s class, “The Other Face of (Im)migration /2008. The quote “Do we grow up to believe in walls” touched me, because in today’s society walls are everywhere, some meant to keep people safe, others to restrict access, and some to show power. I like how Cherrie didn’t only mention the ties between the United States and Mexico, although that is a big divide, other walls in history are just as important and relevant. Cherrie did an excellent job incorporating those; for instance the Berlin Wall part of the Soviet Union. Her personal reflection on the Berlin Wall allowed me to relate to her and I saw her story as inspiration. Another section I also enjoyed was, “In My Country.” She mentions the ignorance of the people within the United States, although it sounds almost as an insult I believe what she says most individuals think but are too afraid to say it aloud. I agree with most of her reflections such as most have hapless fears, most are taught little value in schools, and how we have grown to be more and more lazy. Our society has failed to teach many important historical facts and technology is failing to teach morals. I really like how Cherri talks in the first person it is as though she is speaking directly to the audience.
One of the things that caught my attention was the story of her uncle and his writings. I wonder what she did with those journals of his, like did she edit them and try to get them publish. I agree with Moraga that the current school system isn’t well suited for the students. I feel that the current school system is very linear that are for teaching for the tests. I don’t think a lot of teachers don’t incorporate their students various background knowledge and instead just stick to a lesson plan straight out of a book and don’t even change it to meet the students’ needs. I also agree that we only learn from teachers. In our lives we can learn from anyone that we can meet. It doesn’t have to be information that comes from a book but it can also be how to live and enjoy life and other simple things that we can learn from people in our lives. I think we have full ownership of whatever we write, but I don’t think we control how people take from it and how they read it as.
The types of issues that Moraga encounters I think when she writes is the pressure to represent for her heritage that she feels the Anglo dominated society is trying to erase. She writes, ” the U.S. ruling class intends to de-Africanize, de-Asianize, and de-Indianize its citizens of color.(83)”. I think Moraga feels the pressure of having to adress her Indian heritage in her writings since she has some power to preserve her heritage that the U.S. ruling class is trying to make extinct.
When Moraga was accussed by Anzaldua of plagarism, she wrote “I do know she spoke of “plagarism”.I was stunned (117).” Moraga probably thought she was just adding to the ideas that she got from Anzalduas piece, not plagarising. However, such confusion of rules and understanding that people have I think relate to the confusion of what each woman stands for in the womans movement. Even though we see the like thinking of Moraga and Anzaldua, they still held different opinions for “The Bridge called my back”. Moraga endorsed what ” The Bridge called my back” stood for with the diversity of the Feminism movement when Anzaldua didn’t support the diversity of what the book stood for. I think the Feminist movement is seperated into women who want the movement to represent all the different aspects of the movement(like Moraga), and other women who want the movement to represent seperate issues of women.
“Act now, ever mindful of the seventh generations that will follow,” (page 91). Cherríe Moraga talks about the right to remember, the idea of retelling our story, not letting someone tell it for us so that we are written out of it. Or as the quote above claims so that it survives for the seventh generation. She asks to acknowledge the integrity we should carry as we document with an open and humility of heart so that we do not forget ourselves to one another. I think this is a very important idea because we have to retell our story, which is our history which at one point was our present, because it holds information that no one can take away from us even if it is not published. Like I stated we have to take charge of it because if we leave it up to someone else to do, the present will be a different present to the seventh generation and we do not want that to happen.
On a different note of remembering, when Cherriíe writes, “Believe in your body, its voice, its movement, its cellular story,” (page 86), she talk about another memory, the instinctive memory our body unconsciously makes. I’ve recently become aware of this memory as I watch my mom recover. Her brain sends the messages that her body will not listen to but the doctors as well as us tell her to be patient to continue sending the message because before she knows, her body will respond and it will remember. As of now, its interesting to see what it does remember like the involuntary movement to cover her mouth when she yawns and soon enough she will control those involuntary movements and they will be more powerful because they will be her own.
The importance of taking action not just for ourselves but for our future seems to be key to Cherríe.
Although I do take issue with some of what Cherrie Moraga says in her chapter about Gloria Anzaldua, I entirely back up her decision to not contribute to This Bridge We Call Home. If she fundamentally disagreed with the politics of it, of the construction of it, then of course she shouldn’t contribute. And to some extent, I agree with her. Women of Color feminism and Queer Women of Color feminism did not become perfect mechanisms after This Bridge Called My Back. Its sequel should still have been exclusively women of color, because there are many ways in which women of color are still not empowered as a group, and until they empower themselves as a group, they perhaps they should not allow men or white women to come into their created spaces and potentially muddy what is not secure. But maybe that is just a scared way to think. Maybe I’ve just been reading too much Cherrie Moraga, and her point of view is dominating my thoughts! Even if she had been right about Gloria Anzaldua’s writing taking place more in a vision than in a political reality, I don’t think Anzaldua was envisioning anything that could not become a political reality. While it is important to investigate the reality of what is happening around you, it is sometimes almost more important to investigate a future potential ideal. But perhaps Anzaldua spoke too soon.
Cherri Moraga states, “We were still barely understanding how to effectively move beyond the racial categories and strategies of political resistance and identity politics formulated in response to the 1960s and 1970s people-of-color movements, as well as to white feminism and gay liberation” (122). Although I can see where she is coming from in not wanting to contribute to This Bridge We Call Home, I can be understanding her wrong, but I think that the only way to bring the various communities together is through a dialogue. Anzaldua was envisioning a “meditation that is more ‘transmitted’ than written, more rite than write” (123). Moraga says that the movement in practice “had not arrived at a place of such inclusion” but she does not mention when she thought the movement would ever arrive (123).
In my opinion, any writer should have control over what they want to write about or what projects they want to contribute to. With that being said, it was Cherrie’s personal decision to not contribute to “This Bridge We Call Home.” I don’t think there was anything wrong with her decision. She didn’t agree with the vision of the book, so why would she contribute to something she didn’t agree with. After learning that the book would include men and white women authors, Cherrie stated “I decided not to contribute to the book, not out of politic that can be dismissed as “exclusion,” but due to what I perceived as strategic in terms of the further development of U.S. women-of-color feminism.” She believed that movement still need helped uniting women of color feminist before including other groups. However, despite the differences between Moraga and Anzaldua, I believe they could of resolved their differences. I think Cherrie had a hard time grieving her death because of what had happened, and it wasn’t until she saw Anzaldua’s “image” that she felt she had her approval.