This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

This chapter elaborates on an important theme throughout This Bridge: the exclusion and exploitation of those who are not white in the women’s movement. “And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures with You” by Jo Carillo opens the chapter with a poem on how “our white sisters/radical friends” use pictures of happy looking Third World women to self-righteous ends, such as ads for literacy campaigns, all the while remaining distasteful of the less cheerful reality of these women both at home and abroad.

In the following poem, “Beyond the Cliffs of Abiquiu,” Jo Carillo captures the condescending attitude of white people as they visit Indigenous sites, benefiting from the craftsmanship and tourism while simultaneously looking down upon the Navajos who work and live there.

In “I Don’t Understand Those Who Have Turned Away from Me,” Chrystos writes a stream of consciousness prose on her exhausting interactions with white people, and in particular the embittering lack of understanding and loyalty from white fellow lesbians. Mitsuye Yamada describes her experiences of selective racism, ignorance, and exclusion in the women’s movement in her short essay, “Asian Pacific American Women and

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