This Bridge Called My Back Analysis

I found most of the pieces in “This Bridge Called My Back” to be a comforting representation of my experience as a woman of color. Furthermore, I was inspired by a multitude of the unproblematic pieces such as “I am What I am” and “The Bridge Poem” regarding their desire to become closer to their respective cultures and their themes of reclaiming oneself as a method of self-care. Even though other pieces such as “A Pathology of Racism” were hurtful considering they denied the opportunities to build coalitions with white women and boarded on what some would term reverse racism, I still saw myself. Which sounds terrible, but it’s true. And never have I seen my skin bleeding so profusely into ink. Never was I delighted someone used my body as target practice, hoping to bounce enlightening metaphors and the relatable stories of cultural starvation off of these rickety bones. Yet, I agree this discussion of barring white women from the movement “until these wimmin evolve” only serves to diminish the black feminist movement. However, as a person who has

Yet, I loved the coded message that this alienation from blackness was a prison of my own making. For instance, in my submission “The Art of Being Forgotten,” I discuss that I feel disconnected from Mother Africa “because she doesn’t know me! She’s never seen my face.” Yet, in identifying how I am separated from the black community due to my lack of knowledge of African culture, I completely dismiss Black American’s contribution and creation of their culture. Much like Mary created her own alienation by saying that she couldn’t be black because she “was smart enuf”, “wasn rowdy enuf”, and “just wasn colo/ed enuf” meaning she defined blackness as uneducated, violent, and darker skinner which inadvertently forced her outside of