Cherríe L. Moraga QUOTES

1 " ...it is not really the difference the oppressor fears so much as the similarity. He fears he will discover in himself the same aches, the same longings as those of the people he has shit on... . He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

2 " The political writer, then is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga

3 " 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. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga

4 " A writer will write with or without a movement; but at the same time, for Chicano, lesbian, gay and feminist writers-anybody writing against the grain of Anglo misogynist culture-political movements are what have allowed our writing to surface from the secret places in our notebooks into the public sphere. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga

5 " Think of it in terms of men's and women's cultures: women live in male systems, know male rules, speak male language when around men, etc. But what do men really know about women? Only screwed up myths concocted to perpetuate the power imbalance. It is the same situation when it comes to dominant and non-dominant or colonizing and colonized cultures/ countries/ people. As a bilingual/bicultural woman whose native culture is not American, I live in an American system, abide by American rules of conduct, speak English when around English speakers, etc., only to be confronted with utter ignorance or concocted myths and stereotypes about my own culture.

-- Judit Moschkovich - "--But I Know You, American Woman "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

6 " When entering a room full of soldiers who fear hearts
you put your heart in your back pocket. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga

7 " someone who did languages for a living stopped me in the subway because how I spoke was a linguist's treat
I mean there it was yiddish and Spanish and fine refined college educated english and irish which I mainly keep in my prayers "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

8 " while the chilliest Anglo-Saxon repression of sex pretends it simply doesn't exist, Latin repression says it's a filthy fact of life, use it for what it's worth . . . shake it in his face, wear it as a decoy. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

9 " What drew me to politics was my love of women, the agony I felt in observing the straight-jackets of poverty and repression I saw in my own family. But the deepest political tragedy I have experienced is how with such grace, such blind faith, this commitment to women in the feminist movement grew to be exclusive and reactionary. I call my white sisters on this. I have had enough of this. And I am involved in this book because more than anything else I need to feel enlivened again in a movement that can finally, as my friend Amber Hollibaugh states, "ask the right questions and admit to not having all the answers. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

10 " I get angry with those in the women's movement and out of it who deal with class & color as if they defined politics and people. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

11 " Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga

12 " 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. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

13 " 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. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

14 " Don't let the past steal your present. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga

15 " I am what I am and you can't take it away with all the words and sneers at your command. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

16 " The real power, as you and I well know, is collective. I can’t afford to be afraid of you, nor you of me. If it takes head-on collisions, let’s do it: this polite timidity is killing us. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

17 " It’s the Poverty.

I lack imagination you say

No. I lack language.
The language to clarify
my resistance to the literate.
Words are a war to me.
They threaten my family.

To gain the word
to describe the loss
I risk losing everything.
I may create a monster
the word’s length and body
swelling up colorful and thrilling
looming over my mother, characterized.
Her voice in the distance
unintelligible illiterate.
These are the monster’s words. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , Loving in the War Years

18 " We are challenging white feminists to be accountable for their racism because at the base we still want to believe that they really want freedom for all of us. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

19 " Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage.
Naomi Littlebear "

― Cherríe L. Moraga , This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

20 " When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation. "

― Cherríe L. Moraga

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