A few months ago, I got some incredible news about one of the most critical and curative feminist/womanist of color texts to ever be published: the fourth edition of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color is being printed by SUNY Press!
At the National Women’s Studies Association’s annual conference last November, SUNY Press had a table at the book vendor fair where they publicized the release of This Bridge. At the time, I didn’t believe it; I had been told again and again throughout my college career that the text was no longer in print, that I could pay some absurd amount of money to obtain a copy or that I could just find it online as a PDF. I yearned for the physical text, to be able to read it by low light before going to bed, to carry it with me as a shield, a friend, a backbone, but had settled for scanned chapters and essays retyped by loving people who knew the importance of making this text accessible. So, it was to my stupendous surprise that SUNY Press was NOT joking about reprinting This Bridge and that it would come at an affordable cost–$30 for a paperback copy: a small price to pay for a book that’s saved your life.
This Bridge’s original publisher, South End Press, a progressive publishing house dedicated to radical political writings, suffered financially during the 2008 economic recession. Despite its will to live, South End Press ultimately shut down in June of 2014, releasing the rights back to the authors. By some beautiful grace, SUNY Press got a hold of This Bridge along with an extended introduction by one editor, Cherríe Moraga, and a formerly unpublished statement by the other, Gloria Anzaldúa. The text is a collection of essays, poems, personal narratives, interviews, and visual art, all attempting to respond to the questions, “what are the particular conditions of oppression suffered by women of color?…How has the special circumstances of her pain been overlooked by Third World movements, solidarity groups, ‘international feminists?’…How do we organize to survive this war? To keep our families, our bodies, our spirits intact?”*
Gloria Anzaldúa & Cherríe Moraga
I am so very lucky to be alive and financially able to obtain a copy of This Bridge. Anyone who loves books knows how satisfying it is to love something in the flesh with no electronic barriers between. Currently, I am anxiously waiting for my copy, to hold it close, to feel its weight, to finally be face-to-face with the physical thing that has indisputably changed my entire life. I am lucky to be alive. I am lucky to be here. I am lucky. I am lucky.
*from Refugees of a World on Fire: Foreword to the Second Edition [of This Bridge Called My Back] by Cherríe Moraga
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