this bridge we call home

Gloria E. Anzaldúa is a self-described tejana patlache (queer) nepantlera spiritual activist and has played a pivotal role in defining U.S. feminisms, Chicano/a issues, ethnic studies, and queer theory. Her book Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza was selected as one of the 100 best books of the century by HungryMind Review and the Utne Reader.AnaLouise Keating is a nepantlera, spiritual activist, and associate professor of Women's Studies at Texas Women's University. She is the author of Women Reading Women Writing and has published articles on critical "race" theory, queer theory, and Latina and African American women writers.

"Reading this bridge we call home, which has more than 80 contributors, is like attending a late-night party with every noteworthy activist, professor, and artist you've ever met. The lives out its subtitle; it's hard to walk away from reading it without feeling changed." -- Bitch"Readers interested in feminism and multiculturalism will appreciate the variety of contributors and viewpoints." -- Booklist"this bridge we call home is a book that, like its predecessor, turns our ideas upside down, revisits the battlegrounds of identity politics, and pushes us to ask hard questions about ourselves and our communities...Anzaldua and Keating have created a daring collection." -- Daisy Hernandez, coeditor, Colonize This!Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism"From shouldering the traumas and dramas of life in the most powerful country in the world, the U.S., toward the creation of a different world--a sort of us/then and us/now--this bridge we call home is a step in gathering up and documenting our best thoughts about collected, difficult experiences. Diversity, difference, underlying pain, and gain, are revealed, spoken, and still, as in an earlier bridge, with a hope about speaking with the mainstream, the malestream, as well as the many more outside of either. An accomplishment, a brave, collaborative model for understanding the importance of both collected and collective experience." -- Deena J. Gonzalez, Chair, Dept. of Chicana/o Studies, Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles and author of Refusing theFavor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880"If you're ready for some serious fare by some of the best women of color writers working today, this is a collection for you." -- Curve"this bridge we call home is a continuation of the voices, thoughts, and imagings found in the first book and an addition of issues that have only recently come to light. It is a work that encourages all of us to envision new ways of seeing, new ways of doing, and new ways of thikning about that which surrounds us every day. I found it well written, enthralling, and very motivating. A masterpiece that is sure to influence our lives for years to come." -- Altar Magazine

• Part 1 “Looking for my own bridge to get over” … exploring the impact; Chapter 1 Open the Door, Nora Gutierrez; Chapter 2 Chameleon, Lobel Andemicael; Chapter 3 Del puente al arco iris: transformando de guerrera a mujer de la paz—From Bridge to Rainbow: Transforming from Warrior to Woman of Peace, Renée M. Martínez; Chapter 4 Nacido en un Puente/Born on a Bridge, Hector Carbajal; Chapter 5 Engaging Contradictions, Creating Home …Three Letters, Alicia P. Rodriguez, Susana L. Vasquez; Chapter 6 Bridges/Backs/Books: A Love Letter to the Editors, Jesse Swan; Chapter 7 Bridging Different Views: Australian and Asia-Pacific Engagements with This Bridge Called My Back, Helen Johnson; Chapter 8 Thinking Again: This Bridge Called My Back and the Challenge to Whiteness, Rebecca Aanerud; Chapter 9 The Spirit of This Bridge, Donna Hightower Langston; Chapter 10 Remembering This Bridge, Remembering Ourselves: Yearning, Memory, and Desire, M. Jacqui Alexander; Chapter 11 Seventh Fire, Joanne DiNova; Part 2 “Still struggling with the boxes people try to put me in” … resisting the labels; Chapter 12 Interracial, Amy Sara Carroll; Chapter 13 Los Intersticios: Recasting Moving Selves, Evelyn Alsultany; Chapter 14 Gallina Ciega: Turning the Game on Itself, Leticia Hernández-Linares; Chapter 15 Que Onda Mother Goose: The Real Nursery Rhyme From El Barrio, Berta Avila; Chapter 16 The Hipness of Mediation: A Hyphenated German Existence, Mita Banerjee; Chapter 17 Living Fearlessly With and Within Differences: My Search for Identity Beyond Categories and Contradictions, Shefali Milczarek-Desai; Chapter 18 A Letter to a Mother, from Her Son, Hector Carbajal; Chapter 19 Young Man Popkin: A Queer Dystopia, Marla Morris; Chapter 20 Transchildren, Changelings, and Fairies: Living the Dream and Surviving the Nightmare in Contemporary America, Jody Norton; Chapter 21 The Real Americana, Kimberly Roppolo; Chapter 22 Shades of a Bridge’s Breath, Nathalie Handal; Chapter 23 Nomadic Existence: Exile, Gender, and Palestine (an E-mail Conversation between Sisters), Reem Abdelhadi, Rabab Abdulhadi; Chapter 24 (Re)Writing Home: A Daughter’s Letter to Her Mother, Minh-Ha T. Pham; Chapter 25 In the End (Al Fin) we are all Chicanas (Somos Todos Chicanas), Susan M. Guerra; Part 3 “Locking arms in the master’s house” … omissions, revisions, new issues; Chapter 26 Burning House, Liliana Wilson Grez; Chapter 27 “What’s Wrong with a Little Fantasy?” Storytelling from the (Still) Ivory Tower, Deborah A. Miranda; Chapter 28 Footnoting Heresy: E-mail Dialogues, Deborah A. Miranda, AnaLouise Keating; Chapter 29 Memory and the New-Born: The Maternal Imagination in Diaspora, Shirley Geok-lin Lim; Chapter 30 The “White” Sheep of the Family: But Bleaching Is like Starvation, Nada Elia; Chapter 31 Lesbianism, 2000, Cheryl Clarke; Chapter 32 “Now That You’re a White Man”: Changing Sex in a Postmodern World—Being, Becoming, and Borders, Max Wolf Valerio; Chapter 33 Poets, Lovers, and the Master’s Tools: A Conversation with Audre Lorde, Mary Loving Blanchard; Chapter 34 “All I Can Cook Is Crack on a Spoon”: A Sign for a New Generation of Feminists, Simona J. Hill; Chapter 35 Don’t Touch: Recuerdos (Self-Destruction), Berta Avila; Chapter 36 Premature, Donna Tsuyuko Tanigawa; Chapter 37 The Reckoning, Joy Harjo; Part 4 “A place at the table” … Surviving the battles, shaping our worlds; Chapter 38 Puente del Fuego, Nova Gutierrez; Chapter 39 Vanish Is a Toilet Bowl Cleaner, Chrystos; Chapter 40 Yo’ Done Bridge Is Fallin’ Down, Judith K. Witherow; Chapter 41 Council Meeting, Marisela B. Gomez; Chapter 42 For My Sister: Smashing the Walls of Pretense and Shame; Chapter 43 Resisting the Shore, Nadine Naber; Chapter 44 Standing on This Bridge, Chandra Ford; Chapter 45 Stolen Beauty, Genny Lim; Chapter 46 Looking for Warrior Woman (Beyond Pocahontas), Joanne Barker; Chapter 47 So Far from the Bridge, Renae Bredin; Chapter 48 The Ricky Ricardo Syndrome: Looking for Leaders, Finding Celebrities, Rosa Maria Pegueros; Chapter 49 Survival, Jeanette Aguilar; Chapter 50 Imagining Differently: The Politics of Listening in a Feminist Classroom, Sarah J. Cervenak, Karina L. Cespedes, Caridad Souza, Andrea Straub; Part 5 “Shouldering more identity than we can bear” … seeking allies in academe; Chapter 51 Nurturance, Kay Picart; Chapter 52 Aliens and Others in Search of the Tribe in Academe, Tatiana de la Tierra; Chapter 53 The Fire in My Heart, Sunu P. Chandy; Chapter 54 Notes from a Welfare Queen in the Ivory Tower, Laura A. Harris; Chapter 55 Being the Bridge: A Solitary Black Woman’s Position in the Women’s Studies Classroom as a Feminist Student and Professor, Kimberly Springer; Chapter 56 This World Is My Place, Bernadette García; Chapter 57 Missing Ellen and Finding the Inner Life: Reflections of a Latina Lesbian Feminist on the Politics of the Academic Closet, Mirtha N. Quintanales; Chapter 58 The Cry-Smile Mask: A Korean-American Woman’s System of Resistance, Jid Lee; Chapter 59 Andrea’s Third Shift: The Invisible Work of African-American Women in Higher Education, Toni C. King, Lenora Barnes-Wright, Nancy E. Gibson, Lakesia D. Johnson, Valerie Lee, Betty M. Lovelace, Sonya Turner, Durene I. Wheeler; Chapter 60 Recollecting This Bridge in an Anti–Affirmative Action Era: Literary Anthologies, Academic Memoir, and Institutional Autobiography, Cynthia Franklin; Chapter 61 Healing Sueños for Academia, Irene Lara; Part 6 “Yo soy tu otro yo—i am your other i” … forging common ground; Chapter 62 My tears are wings, Chrystos; Chapter 63 The Colors Beneath Our Skin, Carmen Morones; Chapter 64 Connection: The Bridge Finds Its Voice, Maria Proitsaki; Chapter 65 The Body Politic—Meditations on Identity, Elana Dykewomon; Chapter 66 Speaking of Privilege, Diana Courvant; Chapter 67 The Latin American and Caribbean Feminist/Lesbian Encuentros: Crossing the Bridge of Our Diverse Identities, Migdalia Reyes; Chapter 68 Sitting in the Waiting Room of Adult and Family Services at SE 122nd in Portland, Oregon, with My Sister and My Mother Two Hours Before I Return to School (April 1995), Ednie Kaeh Garrison; Chapter 69 Tenuous Alliance, Arlene (Ari) Istar Lev; Chapter 70 Chamizal, Alicia Gaspar de Alba; Chapter 71 Linkages: A Personal-Political Journey with Feminist-of-Color Politics, Indigo Violet; Part 7 “I am the pivot for transformation” … enacting the vision; Chapter 72 Girl and Snake, Liliana Wilson Grez; Chapter 73 Thawing Hearts, Opening a Path in the Woods, Founding a New Lineage, Helene Shulman Lorenz; Chapter 74 Still Crazy After All These Tears, Luisah Teish; Chapter 75 “And Revolution Is Possible”: Re-Membering the Vision of This Bridge, Randy P. L. Conner, David Hatfield Sparks; Chapter 76 Witch Museum, Alicia Gaspar de Alba; Chapter 77 Forging El Mundo Zurdo: Changing Ourselves, Changing the World, AnaLouise Keating; Chapter 78 In the Presence of Spirit(s): A Meditation on the Politics of Solidarity and Transformation, Inés Hernández-Ávila; Chapter 79 Continents, Anne Waters; Chapter 80 Now let us shift … the path of conocimiento … inner work, public acts, Gloria E. Anzaldúa;