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Maxine Kumin

Cherrie Moraga

Nella Larsen

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Nancy K. Miller

Adrienne Rich

Virginia Woolf

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“Sunday Dearest, You can’t think how I loved your letter. But I feel I have gone too far this time to come back again. I am certain now that I am going mad again. It is just as it was the first time, I am always hearing voices, and I shan’t get over it now. All I want to say is that Leonard has been so astonishingly good, every day, always; I can’t imagine that anyone could have done more for me than he has. We have been perfectly happy until these last few weeks, when this horror began. Will you assure him of this? I feel he has so much to do that he will go on, better without me, and you will help him. I can hardly think clearly anymore. If I could I would tell you what you and the children have meant to me. I think you know. I have fought against it, but I can’t any longer. Virginia.”

A close friend of the poet Anne Sexton until Sexton's suicide in 1975,

Kumin has said that they frequently shared their works in progress and had an enormous influence on each other.

That’s where Anne Sexton and I met. She said of me that I was the frump of frumps; I was in awe of her. She wore high heels and pancake makeup and had flowers in her hair. You could not possibly find two more different women.

Anne Sexton helped me to open up in ways that I might not have achieved on my own. I helped to formalize some of her concepts. She would read these raw drafts – I even pulled some out of the wastebasket in her study – and I’d say, “This could be a pretty good poem if you could just hammer it into form.” That was pretty much my approach to the private, personal, anguished material which is now called confessional. If you could formalize it, you could make it work. Her best poems were those poems – the poems in All My Pretty Ones, her second book. She helped me get rid of the Latinate terminology in my poems. She was encouraging about my country poems – she titled Up Country. At that time you could put a second telephone line in your house if you were living in the same suburb or a contiguous one for 4 dollars and 80 cents a month, which we did. Then one of us would initiate the call and we would leave the phones connected all day and if we had something to share we would whistle into the phone. It really trains your ear to be hearing poems in process that way. We worked intimately together, and yet I think our voices are very different.

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Shall I say how it is in your clothes? A month after your death I wear your blue jacket. The dog at the center of my life recognizes you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic. In the left pocket, a hole. In the right, a parking ticket delivered up last August on Bay State Road. In my heart, a scatter like milkweed, a flinging from the pods of the soul. My skin presses your old outline. It is hot and dry inside. I think of the last day of your life, old friend, how I would unwind it, paste it together in a different collage, back from the death car idling in the garage, back up the stairs, your praying hands unlaced, reassembling the bits of bread and tuna fish into a ceremony of sandwich, running the home movie backward to a space we could be easy in, a kitchen place with vodka and ice, our words like living meat. Dear friend, you have excited crowds with your example. They swell like wine bags, straining at your seams. I will be years gathering up our words, fishing out letters, snapshots, stains, leaning my ribs against this durable cloth to put on the dumb blue blazer of your death. !-“How It Is” Maxine Kumin

Fundamentally, I started writing to save my life. Yes, my own life first. I see the same impulse in my students-the dark, the queer, the mixed-blood, the violated-turning to the written page with a relentless passion, a drive to avenge their own silence, invisibility, and erasure as living, innately expressive human beings.!-Cherrie Moraga

“I am a woman with a foot in both worlds; and I refuse the split. I feel the necessity for dialogue. Sometimes I feel it urgently.”

“A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives — our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings — all fuse to create a politic born of necessity.”

“A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.”

"We have begun to come out of the shadows; we have begun to break with routines and oppressive customs and to discard taboos; we have commenced to carry with pride the task of thawing hearts and changing consciousness

Women, let's not let the danger of the journey and the vastness of the territory scare us — let's look forward and open paths in these woods. Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks.“Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar.”

Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks.

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Anthony Cao, Cole Kantgias Joint Introduction

FYWS: Community and Collaboration

12/10/14

Galvan

!!

! The collaborative writing process is a very common practice that can be traced

throughout literary history. A collaboration can consist simply of a group of writers writing about

a similar topic and sharing ideas, a group of writers co-authoring a piece and working in unison,

or any process which involves multiple authors working together. This process has been highly

valued in literature, and has arguably led to some of the best works of all time. Whether a part of

movements such as Transcendentalism or Feminism, a prominent group of creatives like

Bloomsbury, a co-authored novel by two peers, or just a casual discourse between authors, the

collaborative process has been valued through the ages. To this end, a number of collaborations

between female authors have developed throughout literary history which have contributed

greatly to the elevation of female status in literary, social and political spheres.

With this in mind, our discourse highlights three different types of collaborations,

chronologically highlighting three prominent collaborations that have impacted literary history in

a positive way, bringing the genius of the female author to light. The first such work we examine

is that of the Bloomsbury group, a mix of creative types headed by sisters Vanessa Bell and

Virginia Woolf who produced some of the period’s best literature and art respectively. Though

this group was not entirely composed of women, it can be argued that the presence of men gave

credence to their cause, and allowed them to be taken seriously. The second collaboration we

explore is between Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton, two close friends who had an intimate

collaborative experience through their shared editing and spring-boarding of ideas between each

other. They shared a very close bond which was apparent in their writing as they both influenced

each other on a very personal level. Finally, we examine the feminist anthology This Bridge

Called My Back headed by editors Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua. This large-scale

collaboration shows the sheer force of women in writing and is a prime example of a

collaboration that worked, as it highlighted a number of ideas pertaining to the feminist cause.

All of the three collaborations explored in this discourse highlight distinct typed of writing,

different groups of women, and show the impact of women in literary history. It was through

time and the help of these collaborations that these female writers were able to effect the

significant social changes that they did.

While observing and examining the social and political changes female authors have

effected is of great importance, it is equally important to examine the writers themselves. In our

group's second essay, we discuss the subject of the writers of the feminist movement and the

relations that formed between them as opposed to the texts they penned as well as their social

circumstances growing up. In discussing these topics, we seek to understand the reasons why

different writers such as Adrienne Rich and Cherrie Moraga developed different perspectives of

and means of advancing the feminist movement. Specifically, this second essay focuses on the

different upbringings of Rich and colored writers such as Bambara and Moraga and how they led

them to develop different ideas on how to advance the feminist cause. Since Rich was born and

raised in a white family, she did not have to deal with racial prejudice growing up and therefore

was more concerned about the effectiveness of poetry and art in conveying political messages

than the conflicts within the feminist movement. On the other hand, Bambara and Moraga dealt

with this prejudice on a daily basis and as such, they prioritized the goal of unifying the disparate

groups within the feminist movement.

By examining both the social changes that female writers were able to effect and the

relationships that developed between them, our group attempts to highlight the significant

accomplishments of female writers in literary history as well as bring to light the struggles they

faced in accomplishing their goals.

!

Cole Kantgias!

Community and Collaboration!

Profesor Margaret Galvan!

24 November 2014!

The Impact of Female Writing Collaborations on Literary History!

! Throughout literary history, writers have been inspired by their predecessors. The

likes of Thoreau, Woolf, Baldwin, and others who came before them continue to inspire

the writers of today. In some instances, writers of a certain school of thought inspired

countless followers who became their descendants; feminists like Wollstonecraft and de

Beauvoir serve as a prime example for the feminists who followed. However, another

form of this inspiration comes when writers work collaboratively, writing in sync to

advance a common good. There are countless examples of this latter form of

inspiration, whether it be an intimate relationship such as that shared between Maxine

Kumin and Anne Sexton, or a much larger relationship exemplified by the writers who

composed the anthology This Bridge Called My Back. Both of these examples and

countless more compose a much larger collaboration, that of females writing within

literary history. When looking at collaborations individually, and then on a much larger

scale, the impact of women writers in literary history can be viewed, and it is obvious

that they have made a remarkably positive impact. !

! Throughout literary history, women writers have struggled to gain a position of

prominence in the historically male dominated realm. Writers such as Woolf, Sexton,

and Rich — all prominent in their own right — struggled for acceptance at first, only to

finally be accepted as they are today. It was not an easy struggle. In order to be

accepted as writers and read by the general public, these women had to fight for their

voice to be heard. One way they did this was through the formation of writing

communities. It was through formation of these groups that women made their voices

heard in numbers. Early groups were formed between women and men, such as that of

the Bloomsbury group, which helped women gain credibility due to the presence of

men. Though Woolf and Bell became very established in their own right, it was the

humble beginnings of the Bloomsbury group and the men and women collaborating

within that made the public realize they were a force to be heard. However, as time

progressed, women were able to form exclusive groups, knowing that their opinions

would still be valued and listened to by the public. Feminist writings are a prime

example of this; though men have always written in favor of the movement as well,

distinct groups of women-only writers have come to flourish. The group of women who

wrote This Bridge Called My Back are a great example of this as they composed an

entire anthology “by women, for women” all on their own.!

! A prominent example of a community of writers that was led by women is that of

the Bloomsbury group. A class of artistic types, including writers, poets, painters, and

sculptors, this 19th century group of English men and women worked as an entity,

sharing ideas amongst each other. Vanessa Bell, a prominent painter of the time, is

considered to be the leader of this group with her sister, writer Virginia Woolf, a close

second in command. Vanessa Bell was considered to be the most maternal figure at the

center of Bloomsbury, and it is arguably because of her that the group flourished. The

group talked about “anything that came into [their] heads,” a fact that Bell was very

proud of as she is considered to be of utmost importance to the collaboration that

occurred between members of the Bloomsbury group (Bell, 77). Bell’s sister, Virginia

Woolf was also very important to the Bloomsbury group. She has become one of the

most prominent writers of our time, and this started with Bloomsbury. It was the passage

of ideas and thoughts among Bloomsbury members that gave her much of her

inspiration. Events like the “Bloomsbury parties” that took place are an example of this

passage of thought. Woolf cites the importance of these events in her diary entry “A

Bloomsbury Party” when she says “There is something indescribably congenial to me in

this easy artists’ talk” the values the same as my own and therefore right: no

impediments: life charming, good, and interesting: no effort: art brooding calmly over it

all and one of this attachment to mundane things” (Woolf, 24). It was with these simple

beginnings that the women of the Bloomsbury group got their footing. Woolf went on to

write prominent pieces such as Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, which has come to be

accepted as a important story exploring characterization. Her “Portrait of a Londoner”

explores the life of a mysterious woman known simply as Mrs. Crowe. Both of these

women-centric works show the proliferation of the feminine being within literature.

Perhaps the reason that this group was able to flourish is that “they gave very different

views of the same idea. That only adds to one’s knowledge about the original, but more

can be learned from another source” (Bell, 74). Regardless of the reason, the impact of

women on literature via the Bloomsbury group is very quantifiable.!

! A more contemporary collaboration occurred in the 20th century between two

close friends, Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin. It was arguably a more intimate

collaboration as it simply involved the passage of ideas between the two poets. Their

collaboration was one of friendship and Miller believed that “the power of friendship

combined with work” will strongly influence “women’s writing of the future,” (Miller, 70).

The relationship between Sexton and Kumin is historically important as it marks an

example of two women working in direct collaboration as a result of an intense

friendship. Kumin said it perfectly when she remarked that she and Sexton were

“intimate friends and professional allies, [who] remained intensely committed to one

another’s writing and well-being” (Kumin, xix). Kumin attributes this freedom of

expression of thought to the idea that women were now freed from their traditional roles

as ‘goddesses of the hearth and bedroom,’ as they were now able to write about all of

their experiences. With respect to their actual writing, Kumin and Sexton had an

intriguing relationship, as they had completely different writing styles. This stark

difference is what they both cite as the reason they worked so well together. It seems

that by having completely different views of writing, they were able to critique and aid

one another in the completion of works. This relationship is an important example

highlighting the impact of women on literary history because it shows the results of an

intense and intimate friendship, untouched by the outside world. Kumin described it as a

friendship fueled by “a world of martinis, and fellow poet Anne Sexton on the other end

of a telephone line” (Miller, 71). Both Kumin and Sexton were able to hone their poetry

and write in sync, and became highly prized poets of the time— all because of a

collaboration they shared with each other. In selected pieces, the collaboration between

the two authors becomes highly obvious. A constant poetic dialogue is present,

including when Kumin wrote the introduction to Sexton’s poetry collection. Another

example of this occurs in Kumin’s “How it is,” a poem she wrote about her memories of

Anne Sexton following her suicide. Remembering her friends, Kumin remarks “Shall I

say how it is in your clothes? // A month after your death I wear your blue

jacket” (Kumin). This shows how intense their friendship was. Their professional

relationship is also evident when Kumin says “Dear friend, you have excited crowds //

with your example. They swell // like wine bags, straining at your seams” (Kumin). And it

is with this image that the reader is left of the Sexton-Kumin relationship; one of them

dead while the other remembers her lasting legacy with a metaphor of their favorite

pass time- powerful, indeed. !

! Another prime example of collaboration between female writers is exposed in the

anthology This Bridge Called My Back, a collection of feminist-style writings with the

focus of advancing the Women’s Right movement. A markedly different type of

collaboration, this group was composed of women only, in opposition to the Bloomsbury

group which was composed of men and women. With the purpose being to “lay down

the plans to cross over on to a new place where stooped labor cramped quarters

down” (Bambara, vi), the collaborators of This Bridge intended to bring women of all

shapes and races into a collaboration of a much larger scale. Perhaps the best example

of a collaboration between women, This Bridge was spearheaded by editors Cherrie

Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua who formed an initial bond, and then wished to bring it to

the world. The mission was “to express all women… the experiences which divide us as

feminists… intending to explore the cause and sources of, and solutions to these

divisions” (Moraga & Anzaldua, xxiii). Both Moraga and Anzaldua were aware of the

hardships facing women, and the fact that women of color were more often than not

excluded from the workings of white women, seeing as the editors were both women of

color themselves. It was with this grain that they went forth with their mission to try to

end this practice. In the process, they met a slew of talented writers along the way who

shared similar ideals and wanted to offer their works. Through this journey, a

collaboration stemming from the original collaboration was formed; the original

exchange of ideas between Moraga and Anzaldua became an exchange of ideas

between both of them as well as countless other writers who wished to contribute their

ideas to the anthology. This text has become a key piece of feminist ideology and plays

an important part in literary history. One of the only works of its kind, this text shows the

real impact of women and the power of an idea. It is a work by women for women, as it

explores the multitude of issues that are facing women of the time. It also shows the

power of female writers, and the change that has occurred in society to allow them to

get to this point. !

! Upon exposure to many different examples of collaboration, the importance of

women becomes apparent. In looking at a collaboration between a group of women and

men, an intimate relationship between two close friends, and between a group of

women exclusive to men, the impact of women writing is shown. All of these examples

cited produced prime works of literary importance. Each of these female oriented

collaborative communities created countless pieces that last until today. The

Bloomsbury group taught the world that women are a force to be reckoned with; the

collaboration and dissemination of ideas among members was both organic and

healthy. This led to countless spinoff works. The collaboration between Sexton and

Kumin shows the power of a friendship and the intimate writings shared between both of

the writers shows a deep care. The collaboration between the writers of This Bridge

show the true power of women in writing and the great lengths that they have come. In

all, each and every one of these collaborations prove the immense powerhouse of

women and their mark on literary history. !

! !

!!!!!

Anthony Cao

FYWS: Community and Collaboration

Galvan

11/12/14

Assignment 3

! Despite being published only a few years apart and pertaining to similar subjects,

Adrienne Rich's Blood Bread and Poetry: The Location of the Poet and Toni Cade Bambara and

Cherríe Moraga's introductions to This Bridge Called My Back vary greatly in how they

approach the matter of the feminist movement in the 1980s. While Rich focuses on the issue of

the role of art in politics and how others perceive it, Bambara examines a problem that exists at a

more fundamental level: the discord and lack of harmony in the feminist movement itself. By

examining the aspects of both literature and the feminist movement that each author focuses on,

we can observe the underlying factors that led Rich and Bambara to focus on different facets of

feminism. Growing up in a white family, Rich did not focus so much on the issue of race but that

of her gender and how it restricted her potential for political involvement. On the other hand,

Bambara's constant struggle with her own race and the white exclusivity of the feminist

movement led her to examine the lack of unity within the movement as the primary impediment

to progress.

Before we can discuss the circumstances that led Rich and Bambara to focus on the role

of art in politics and the discord in the feminist movement respectively, we must first understand

their ideologies regarding these subjects. In Blood Bread and Poetry, Rich emphasizes the

potential of poetry and, for that matter, art in general, to convey a political message. For her,

being able to write “directly and overtly as a woman, out of a woman's body and

experience” (Rich 182) was crucial to using poetry as a tool for political change. Indeed, Rich

believed that by imbuing her writing with all of the ideals the feminist movement embodied, she

could turn poetry into a medium that had to be recognized as more than a “decorative garnish on

the buffet table of the university curriculum, the ceremonial occasion, the national

celebration” (Rich 167).

In contrast, Bambara's focus lies with the members of the feminist movement rather than

the means through which they advance their cause, a fact made apparent by the first lines of her

foreword in which she addresses minority women as a whole as well as her repeated use of the

pronoun “we.” This emphasis on community rather than content reveals itself throughout the rest

of the foreword as well. Similarly, in her foreword to This Bridge called my Back, Moraga begins

by stressing the relationship between people and politic rather than poetry and politic. Moraga

states that the propagation of weapons of mass destruction has “ensured our shared status as a

world population of potential victims” (Moraga xv), demonstrating her belief in the importance

of interpersonal relations. Indeed, for writers such as Bambara and Moraga, the task at hand was

to teach members of the feminist movement, regardless of race and background, “the habit of

listening to each other and learning each other's ways of seeing and being” (Bambara vii).

Now that we have identified the different aspects that Rich, Moraga and Bambara chose

to focus on in their advocacy of the feminist movement, we can begin to examine the

circumstances and histories that led up to them. In Blood Bread and Poetry, Rich examines the

significance poetry holds for her as well as its ability to be used as a tool to convey political

messages. Through close examination, we will see that Rich's advocacy of the poem as a

political instrument stems from past experiences and influences: namely, the constantly

reinforced idea that poetry was not to be mixed with politics.

Poetry was a part of Rich's life ever since she was little. As she states, she grew up

“hearing and reading poems from a very young age, first as sounds, repeated, musical,

rhythmically satisfying in themselves” (Rich 168). It is important to note here that Rich's first

experiences with poetry were purely aesthetic in that she had no consideration for any meaning

beyond the aural pleasure of poetry at the time. In this way, her perception of the poem prompted

her to subconsciously define it as a form separate from politics, focusing on the sound of a word

rather than its meaning. Indeed, this initial attitude towards poetry had a great impact on how

Rich perceived it as she grew older. This influence becomes apparent when Rich notes that the

attitudes towards poetry she grew up with led her to “believe in poetry, in all art, as the

expression of a higher world view, what the critic Edward Said has termed “a quasi-religious

wonder, instead of a human sign to be understood in secular and social terms” (Rich 170). That is

to say, Rich believed that the work of the poet was something that existed beyond the scope of

what was considered everyday and normal, that it resided on some elevated plane of existence.

As she puts it, Rich thought that “poets were inspired by some transcendent authority and spoke

from some extraordinary height” and failed to realize that the idealization of certain poets was

merely a reflection of “the taste of a particular time or of particular kinds of people” (Rich 170).

Naturally, this glorification of the poet would prevent Rich from being able to relate to poetry

and obtain any sort of significant understanding of it, furthering the separation of poetry and

politic already planted in her mind. Furthermore, Rich herself notes that her outlook on society

was negatively influenced by the poetry that she read, observing that “my personal world view

was shaped in part by the poetry I had read, a poetry written almost entirely by white Anglo-

Saxon men, a few women, Celts and Frenchmen notwithstanding” (Rich 171). Indeed, this

observation is indicative of the fundamental difference between Rich's perspective and those of

colored women such as Bambara and Moraga; while Rich only became aware of the racial biases

that the poetry she read enforced later in life, Bambara and Moraga had to grapple with its

consequences from the very beginning.

So far we have seen that nearly all of Rich's prior experiences with poetry have, whether

consciously or unconsciously, led her to consider the poem as an art that exists purely for the

sake of aesthetic appreciation. In this case then, there must have been a turning point, something

that prompted Rich to consider the potential of poetry outside the strictly artistic realm. Indeed,

this turning point comes during Rich's college years in the form of Francis Otto Matthiessen and

Rich's discovery of W. B. Yeats’s work. As Rich notes of Matthiessen, “poetry, in his classroom,

never remained in the realm of pure textual criticism” (Rich 172). By realizing that poems

existed as more than just sound, Rich took first step in her discovery of the poem as a political

instrument. At this point, we can see her begin to become aware of poetry's existence outside of

the artistic realm as well as the tendency of academic institutions to try and imprison it within

this realm. In speaking of “New England racism against Black and Hispanic people”, Rich

observes that “it was, strangely enough, through poetry that I first began to try to make sense of

these things” (Rich 173). Through this statement, we can see Rich's ironic realization that

although schools tended to try and isolate poetry and art from political subjects, it was through

these mediums that she started to understand the very issues institutions tried to separate them

from. In addition, she says of Yeats's work, “it was this dialogue between art and politics that

excited me in his work, along with the sound of his language – never his elaborate mythological

systems” (Rich 174), demonstrating her growing awareness of the strength of poetry as a

political form.

While Rich's experiences with poetry from a young age led her to change her perception

of the medium and eventually advocate its use as a political tool, the circumstances of authors

such as Moraga and Bambara were of a very different nature. Unlike Rich, they were not born

and raised among white society and therefore had to deal with racial misgivings that Rich never

experienced. This additional adversity would inevitably have led to a change in priorities. While

Rich could devote her efforts to producing work that carried a strong message, Bambara and

Moraga had other concerns. In having to struggle with the matter of her race, they were made

painfully aware of the fact that in a movement which strove against the exclusivity of white male

dominated society, there existed an almost identical exclusivity. Hence, Bambara and Moraga

were presented with the additional task of unifying the feminist movement before it could strive

to effect significant social change.

This priority is immediately apparent in Bambara's writing as she begins her foreword to

This Bridge called my Back by mentioning the unifying force of “this collection of cables,

esoesses, conjurations and fusile missiles” (Bambara vi). In doing so, she manages to create a

sense of inclusiveness and draw the reader in as a part of the audience she is addressing. This

concept of unity is prevalent throughout the rest of the foreword as well, as Bambara observes

that “Now that we've begun to break the silence and begun to break through the diabolically

erected barriers and can hear each other and see each other, we can sit down with trust and break

bread together” (Bambara vi). Here, we can see that it is not the ability of women of color to

express themselves through literature that Bambara questions, but the togetherness of the

movement they wish to advance. It is not quite so much a matter of external challenges to

overcome (although those are numerous in their own right) but of internal issues that need to be

resolved. As Bambara puts it, the current struggle of colored women is “coming to terms with

community – race, group, class, gender, self – its expectations, supports, and lessons. And

coming to grips with its perversions – racism, prejudice, elitism, misogyny, homophobia, and

murder” (Rich vii).

By analyzing Bambara's foreword to This Bridge Called My Back, we can gain a clearer

understanding of the problems that she and other colored women seek to resolve as well as their

desires for the feminist movement. In order to further understand how these desires came to be

and how Bambara and others were made aware of the problems they faced, it is necessary to

examine Cherríe Moraga's preface and foreword. In stark contrast to Rich, Moraga introduces

almost immediately the topic of race. She quickly brings in a short anecdote about a scene she

witnessed on the subway, recalling a black boy who was assaulted by a white man and another

boy who was shot the day before. These two scenes and Moraga's reflection on them are very

important in distinguishing Moraga and Bambara's perspective from Rich's. Thinking back upon

these two incidents, Moraga thinks to herself “there are some women in this town plotting a

lesbian revolution. What does this mean about the boy shot in the head is what I want to

know” (Moraga xiv). This issue of race and the conflicts it is inherently associated with is

something Moraga and Bambara have always known due to their own race. As such, a feminist

movement that does not address the topic of race cannot satisfy these two authors who are fully

aware of the violence it can bring. In Moraga's words, “I want a movement that helps me make

some sense of the trip from Watertown to Roxbury, from white to Black” (Moraga xiv).

Furthermore, in her foreword, Moraga notes that “in the mid-70s, feminism, too, betrayed us in

its institutionalized Euro-centrism, its class prejudice, and its refusal to integrate a politic that

proffered whole freedom for women of color” (Foreword, Moraga, xvi). This is not to say that

Rich is ignorant of the issue of race and the problems it poses. Rather, although she may have

been aware of them, Rich did not have any experience of the violence often directed towards

African Americans because she belonged to the white community. As a result of this, it is quite

natural that her primary concern revolved around the ability of her work to effectively give voice

to her ideology.

Although Adrienne Rich's Blood Bread and Poetry and Toni Cade Bambara and Cherríe

Moraga's foreword and preface to This Bridge Called My Back were published only two years

apart, they present distinctly different perspectives on feminism and race. In her advocacy of the

feminist movement, Rich emphasizes the role that poetry and art can play in conveying political

ideologies, “persuading us emotionally of what we think we are 'rationally' against” (Rich 179).

On the other hand, Bambara and Moraga focus on the lack of harmony within the feminist

movement and the inevitable role that race plays in advancing it. Through close analysis of the

ideas these three authors present and examination of their respective works, we can come to see

that their current perspectives are the result of differences in upbringing and prior experience.