Feminisms

I sit at my computer today facing the task of outlining the contributions of Chicana feminism to the study of literature for a new generation of scholars. My computer desktop is layered with open documents of outlines and notes, webpages of histories and authors’ biographies, and a wallpaper image of Coatlique. There are piles of books on my desk with Post-It notes blooming like gardens of thoughts on rows of highlighted text. Xeroxed copies of articles surround me like friends cheering me on. I sit at my computer 32 years after Gloria Anzaldúa wrote her original letter to ThirdWorld Women Writers addressing the exigency of writing without fear, urging us to speak in tongues, and discover our own true voices. Anzaldúa described herself as writing “naked in the sun, typewriter against [her] knee trying to visualize you” (Anzaldúa 1983: 165). As a young Chicana undergrad in the late 1990s, I was so thankful for that “you” in her letter. It was the first literary exchange where I felt like I – a Chicana – was an active part of literature. Now as I sit to write about an ever-growing, needed, critical, and generative Chicana literary perspective, I am trying to visualize you too, in una carta más, but this time to the future scholars of Chicana feminist literature. Midwest Chicana at a Big Ten school, trying to understand why she never read a

Chicana protagonist until her junior year at the university. A working class Ivy League Puertorriqueña who is challenged by the classism of her campus, doing her best to offer critical interventions through her work and presence. A rural Nuevomexicana smuggling roasted Chimayó green chile to her dorm room in Chicago, making it feel a little more like home. A Tejana in Minnesota utilizing scholarly opportunities to contribute to her academic discipline, but struggling to survive the great distance between San Anto and Minneapolis. A Japanese student engaged in studying the complexities in and sensing the similarities of a border culture in countries far away. An undocumented student in Arizona, working to develop her

voice and hone her skills in a hostile environment that would label her and her work illegal. Chicanas who return to their home communities as educators and activists or activist educators, only to realize just how much work there is to be done so that we can continue to be seen and heard and have the opportunity to write and read. We must continue to find our own true voices, but unlike our literary madrina,

Gloria Anzaldúa, who urged us to measure the meaning of work and writing by how much “nakedness [we] achieve,” we no longer find ourselves “naked” in the study of Chicana literary thought (Anzaldúa 1983: 172). Chicana authors such as Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Helena María Viramontes, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Norma Elia Cantú, and many others to be discussed below, wove the sacred garments of Chicana feminist texts that we can wrap ourselves in as we embark on our own work. Though we strive for the same ability to express ourselves and experience the literary representations that Anzaldúa imagined, we put ourselves on the page with the cloaks of the Chicana authors and scholars who came before us. These authors founded a literary sisterhood that expresses the greatest types of

bravery. Many were the only voices in their respective academic departments as the sole Chicana student or faculty member. Many were lone voices in their communities challenging long-held traditions in the name of meaningful change for women. Many disputed traditional literary mores to get published or created their own opportunities to self-publish. Many demanded inclusion in texts, determined that their perspectives were of utmost significance. Many broke through barriers so that opportunities would be available to us. Many dedicated their work to recovering the lost voices of our literary hermanas from the past. And many – despite their own successes and struggles – continue en la lucha to create pathways for the next generation of scholars, that is, you. We must also remain mindful that Chicana feminist politics and writings have

always been coalitional in nature. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981, 1st edn), edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, addressed the interconnectedness of experiences that women of color share. This text is understood to be the genesis of contemporary Chicana feminist thought in the academy, even though we understand that Chicanas and other women of color were writing before its publication. This Bridge marks a cultural moment when women of color assert their literary, political, and academic perspectives as their own movement. During the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s, progressive movements were questioning the exclusion of African-Americans, Latinas/os, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and others in educational institutions. Many women of color found themselves not only locked out of the mainstream study of literature, but also locked out of sexist and heterosexist literary circles in male-dominated progressive movements. Trying to find refuge in the predominantly white Women’s Movement, many women of color authors found themselves battling cultural exclusion, racism, and classism. From these actual and ideological spaces of tension, Chicanas along with other women of color became the literary architects of their own movement. Using a bridge as a metaphor, Moraga and Anzaldúa, the editors of the anthology,

created a structure for a movement that “finally ask[s] the right questions and admit[s] to not having all the answers” (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983: xv). Citing not only their

writing, but also their bodies as text, the editors wanted This Bridge to be a catalyst for building a coalition that reflected “an uncompromised definition of feminism by women of color in the U.S.” (Moraga and Anzaldúa 1983: xxvi). But, please, stop and think of the function of a bridge as a connecting force, often between two previously unconnected territories. The complexity of the bridge imagined in this text speaks directly to the fact that women of color constantly negotiate multiplicities of identity that force us to cross back and forth between subjectivities while traversing multiple oppressions. Moraga and Anzaldúa designed a feminist architecture that creates space to address the physical, lived experiences alongside the psychic, emotional tolls of the experiences of women of color. The text is organized around six sections that still ground the study of Chicana feminism as ideological tenets. Moraga and Anzaldúa asserted:

… what we feel to be major areas of concern for Third World women in the U.S. forming a broad-based political movement: 1) how visibility/invisibility as women of color informs our radicalism; 2) the ways in which Third World women derive a feminist political theory specifically from our racial/cultural background and experience; 3) the destructive and demoralizing effects of racism in the women’s movement; 4) the cultural, class, and sexuality differences that divide women of color; 5) Third World women’s writing as a tool for self-preservation and revolution; and 6) the ways and means of a Third World feminist future.