This Bridge Called My Back

[anatomiste.livejournal.com]

(40) Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds.: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

This is probably my favorite of all the books I've read this year.

Normally I get through anthologies really slowly. I read This Bridge all in one day, and when I finished, if I hadn't had so much schoolwork waiting for me I would have gone back to the beginning and read most of it over again. There is nothing dry or cold about it. In fact, reading it felt like being given a little taste of trust, anger, energy and hope by 29 brilliant women.

This Bridge was my first introduction to any of their works, which means that my reading list became even longer when I'd finished.

I can't even decide what specifically to tell you about this book. I think everyone is likely to find different things in it to love. Instead I'm going to copy out the amazing poem that the title came from (I photocopied it before I returned the book to the library).

The Bridge Poem
Donna Kate Rushin

I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge from everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends' parents...

Then
I've got to explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I'm sick of it

I'm sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be your bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness

I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Oh, yeah, that's an awesome poem.

I just finished it earlier today. It's overdue by a week, so it has to go back, but yeah, there's stuff out of there that I like so very much.

I don't know that I can write a review of it, either. Maybe a what-I've-learned-in-the-last-twenty-years essay. Maybe even why-this-book-feels-like-a-deep-breath-of-clean-air essay. But a review? Can't. And not altogether sure that it's anything but a mug's game to even try.

:: In fact, reading it felt like being given a little taste of trust, anger, energy and hope by 29 brilliant women. ::

Yeah. That. That right there THAT.

[anatomiste.livejournal.com]

I love how the Bridge poem manages to inject a little bit of amount of humor into the anger of the first part (34 individual white people!) and then is able to turn the metaphor of being walked over into a symbol of her determination to strengthen and reconnect herself.

As I was reading I thought I had so much to say, but gradually I realized that it was mostly about specific details affecting me in specifically personal ways, and that the only way I could generalize enough to produce an actual review was to just quote enormous chunks of the book and say "Just read it!" Which is still not a review!

[sanguinity]

If you've got the time and will to do a write-up of the "specific details in specifically personal ways," I'd find that interesting.

As for writing proper reviews... I've lost the sense of pseudo-objectivity that seems to be the basis of reviewing. About the best I can do anymore is point out parts of the story that particularly mattered to me, and hope that I'm making a reasonably fair selection of those things.

[anatomiste.livejournal.com]

If you've got the time and will to do a write-up of the "specific details in specifically personal ways," I'd find that interesting.

I actually caved in and bought a copy on Amazon, so when it arrives I'll try to make a more detailed post. I'll probably post it on my own journal, though.