This Bridge Called My Back has the subtitle "Writings by Radical Women of Color," and this is precisely what is contained in this volume. The writings include poems, short stories, and various types of nonfiction demonstrating the range of interests in this particular segment of the population and the different modes of expression used by black, Asian, and Chicana women writers in addressing their role in the world, the state of society today, and their relationship to that society.
The book is edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua. Anzaldua is a Chicana poet, and Moraga describes herself as "a very tired Chicana/half-breed/feminist/lesbian/writer/teacher/
talker/waitress" (248), born in Los Angeles and productive first in San Francisco and then Boston. The editors brought the writings in this book together first beginning in 1979, and this later edition has a new introduction that discusses the impact of the book and considers the nature of both writers and readers. The editors have received letters from women whose lives were changed by the earlier edition of the book, women who felt that the writers were speaking directly to them and to their needs. The purpose of the book was to provide a different perspective, a perspective until then ignored by other anthologies:
I think that were Bridge to have been conceived of in 1983, as opposed to 1979, it would speak much more directly now to the relations between women and men of color, both gay and heterosexual. In 1979, response to a number of earlier writings by women of color which in the name of feminism focused almost exclusively on relations between the sexes, Bridge intended to make a clean break from that phenomenon. Instead, we created a book which concentrated on relationships between women (Foreword, no page number).
The editors make clear in their introductions to the book that the writings involve several types of writing based on subject matt...