Anzaldua & Sapphire: Write in Your Language!

Written by Tiffany McFadden

In the speech “Speaking In Tongues…” Gloria Anzaldua addresses women writers of color and the “dangers” that they must confront in order to make their voices heard. As women of color, their status is one of invisibility. They are not seen in the white male mainstream world and or the white feminist world. In the beginning of the speech, Anzaldua tells her audience that their risks are different from white women because being colored means “we don’t have as much to lose – we never had any privileges”. To be colored is to be invisible. And to be invisible is to be “inaudible”. Therefore, women writers of color are not seen and are not unheard.

Anzaldua states that some women writers of color “are in danger of contributing to the invisibility of our sister-writers” in the process of trying to make their voices capable of being heard in the white feminist world. The message is for women writers of color to not sell-out, but to embrace their own language and culture; to not conform to the standards of a world that does not want to hear or see you. For women writers of color to conform to the standards of the white male mainstream world and or white feminist world will only perpetuate the invisibility and silencing of the class. The women writers of color must “forget the room of one’s own—write in the kitchen, lock yourself up in the bathroom” and write in your own tongue.

There are many parallels that can be drawn between Anzaldua talks of the dangers that must be confronted by women writers of color in “Speaking In Tongues” and Sapphire’s Push (1996). I feel that Sapphire tackles the issues of invisibility and inaudibility head-on by using the Precious actual voice; the voice of a young black female that has been unable to excel in school due to the emotional and physical abuse of her mother and father. Although Precious does not speak standard American English, she still has a story to tell about her experience. In her tongue (language), Precious is able to capture the minds and hearts of audience.

“The danger i…

Aside

“The danger in writing is not fusing our personal experience and world view with the social reality we live in, with our inner life, our history, our economics, and our vision.”

        Throughout her letter, Andalzua admonishes the woman of color to write about her experiences, to write about what she knows, how she lives, thinks and breathes. Basically to write about life as she knows it. I’m definitely big on writing, even if it’s penning a simple sentence as My day sucked into a journal that’s opened once a month. While I agree with Andalzua, I couldn’t help but think of books that are meant to represent the reality of life.

       To prove a point, or maybe somewhat contradict Andalzua’s statement, I’ll briefly discuss ‘urban fiction.’ There’s been a recent surge in the aforementioned and even talks of introducing the genre (I’m not too sure if I’d call it a genre, but that besides the point) into the public school’s curriculum. In relation to Andalzua’s statement, the authors of ‘urban fiction’ are primarily African-American men and women writing about the struggles of Blacks living in the urban community. I certainly don’t have any reservations against such books, and I’m definitely not opposed to anyone reading them.

I haven’t read, nor do I ever intend to read every single one of these ‘published’ books, (a lot of which are filled with page after page of grammatical errors and multiple fonts). In my experience, the few that I’ve read, briefly skimmed, or asked others about all have very similar plots, characters and life situations. Read one, and you’ve pretty much read them all.

Now I’m not suggesting that these books be banned, or the authors completely halt their writing process. I’m all for creativity, self-expression and writing reality. Yes, write about the challenges of living in the inner city; write about what you know; write about you. But seriously, must the majority of these books be so similar? Why must the Black woman depend on welfare or other government-issued programs?  Why must all her children have different fathers? Where are the stories of Black males who are not selling drugs, shooting each other, pimping fatherless females or serving time in prison? Where are the stories that don’t reinforce the negative ‘White-world stereotypes Andalzua speaks of in her letter?

 

Third World Woman

Similar to Cixous, Anzaldua speaks firmly, assertively, vulgarly and directly to her target audience. As I read, “Speaking in Tongues” my mind immediately jumped to ” The Laugh of The Medusa” and I began to appreciate this form of writing compared to the other works we have read these past couple of weeks. The passion Anzaldua demonstrates in her letter made it easier to read but also relatable through phrases such as, “my dear hermanas” and “dear mujeres de color, companions in writing”.

She begins by broadcasting the division within the feminism community from highest, white women, to lowest, the lesbian of color. Anzaldua makes it clear that she is uncomfortable with this division stating, “my dear hermanas, the dangers we face as women writers of color are not as those of white women though we have many in common. We don’t have much to lose–we never had any privileges…..the beginning woman of color is invisible both in the white male mainstream world and in the white woman’s feminist world….the lesbian of color is not only invisible, she doesn’t even exist”. (165) This powerful statement begins to open the eyes of a naive audience who believe that there is no division. She reiterates this division by mentioning the stereotypes that are given to third world women, “the Black domestic, the lumbering nanny with twelve babies sucking her tits, the slant-eyed Chinese with her expert hand– ‘they know how to treat a man in bed,’ the flat faced Chicana or Indian, passively lying on her back, being fucked by the Man a la La Chingada” (167). For me, these stereotypes brought to mind the expectations for Spanish women that I am familiar with. On the first day of class someone mentioned that in the Spanish community it is expected for the woman to keep and maintain the house “house broken”. You are suppose to know how to cook, clean, and care for the children. With these expectations in mind it is easier to understand the division Anzaldua is referring to.

Next, Anzaldua begins to list the tedious daily task that third world woman have in comparison to the white woman. Quoting Cherrie
Morgan:

“if you are not caught in the maze that (we) are in, its very difficult to explain the hours in the day that we do not have. And the hours that we do not have are hours that are translated into survival skills and money. And when one of those hours is taken away it means an hour not that we don’t have to lie back and stare at the ceiling or an hour that we don’t have to talk to a friend. To me it’s a loaf of bread” (168).

She demonstrates that time is valued among third world women perhaps more so then white women. Later she states that third world women are engulfed in the ideas of white feminist instead of proposing their own. Stating that third world women are “reduced to purveyors of resource lists” and “we cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can’t do the white woman’s homework for her” (168).

Anzaldua’s Letter to 3rd World Women Writers

By Amber Laraque

 

As a woman of color, and a writer, I was able to identify with Gloria Anzaldua’s letter Speaking in Tongues.

Anzaldua highlights the challenges of being a woman of color in the writing world. While reading the other theory pieces, it seemed that the topics were more based on the idea of male and female, man and woman. Reading Anzaldua’s piece, she speaks not only of being a woman in a man’s world, but being a woman of color in a white feminist world.

The points that Anzaldua addresses are eye opening and important because, though women face a lot of the same issues, when race and class come into play, a lot of those issues differ. Anzaldua says: “The dangers we face as women writers of color are not the same as those of white women though we have many in common. We don’t have as much to lose—we never had any privileges.”

Anzaldua also goes on to write about the lack of understanding when it comes to white people and people of color. Her title, Speaking In Tongues, reflects that. In her letter she says, “Because white eyes do not want to know us, they do not bother to learn our language, the language which reflects us, our culture, our spirit.”

It is interesting to think about what Anzaldua is saying in terms of the work Push by Sapphire. Anzaldua speaks of white people “learning our language. Could the feminist literary world of today be more united if cultural languages were understood? Though Anzaldua addresses her letter to 3^rd world women writers, it gives all women writers a lot to think about.

A Resisting Writer

By: Kaydian Campbell

In “Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To 3rd World Women Writers”, Gloria Anzaldúa expresses that the dangers women writers of color face are not akin to obstacles because, “We can’t transcend the dangers, can’t rise above them. We must go through them…” (165). I believe she means that these dangers are embedded within us, within our lives, or within our thoughts. Anzaldúa reminisces on her own struggle with her right to write, “Who am I, a poor Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write?” (166). She explains that it is so easy to question our right to tell our story, whether our story is even worth telling. Her advice is that we should “Write of what most links us with life, the sensation of body, the images seen by the eye, the expansion of the psyche in tranquility: moments of high intensity, its movement, sounds, thoughts” (172). She essentially means we should write what we know, write what we live, with the understanding that it will be true and meaningful. “Nothing is too trivial”, she asserts, “Even though we are hungry, we are not impoverished of experiences“, we do have something to contribute, and it is worthwhile (170, 172). There is no need to transform into into “male-women”, “go to the university”, or “Bow down to the sacred bull, form” (167).

One of the dangers of writing, she asserts, “is not fusing your own personal experience and world view with the social reality we live in, with out inner life, our history, our economics, our vision…The danger is in being too universal and humanitarian and invoking the eternal to the sacrifice of the particular and the feminine and the specific historical moment” (170). Our writing is at risk of falling into the abyss of intellectual musings that are so general and theoretical that what we produce loses its essence and its intimacy. “Precious” almost echoes this idea when she explains what she thinks about the usual approach to writing: “… you an do anything when you talking or writing, it’s not like living when you can only do what you’re doing. Some people tell a story ‘n it don’t make no sense or be true” (3).Therefore as you write, Anzaldúa warns, “Don’t let the pen banish you from yourself…. Don’t let the censor snuff out the spark, nor the gags muffle your voice” (173). Instead, she encourages women writers of color to “throw away abstraction and academic learning, the rules, the map and compass (173). She expresses that not only does society make us think our story is not worth telling, that our story is not glamorous or profound enough to share. There are also voices that seek to censor what you write, and sometimes those voices are our own, because we have been taught what is “valuable”. Anzaldúa explains that “the schools we attended or didn’t attend did not give us the skills for writing not the confidence that we were correct in using class and ethnic languages” (165). Instead, she finds that school, in its own way cripples our writing. Even in writing  this letter, she finds that her first draft was “wooden”, a result she says, of having “not yet unlearned the esoteric bull**** and pseudo-intellectualizing that school brainwashed into [her] writing (165).

I titled my post, “The Resisting Writer” in homage to Judith Fetterley, who wrote The Resisting Reader. I found that there was a huge parallel between Fetterley’s admonition that we should not let the misogynistic works we read cause us to hate our sex, but that we should be skeptical of the way women are portrayed in men’s writing. Similarly Anzaldúa proclaims and encourages our rejection of “the guilt, self denial and race-hatred” that has been “force-fed into us” (167). However, Anzaldúa’s vision is that women writers of color should resist the narratives of “valuable” or “intellectual” writing, and instead to write what is real to us, otherwise, according to “Precious” Jones, “What’s the f***ing use?” (4).

My initial reac…

Aside

My initial reaction to “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Woman Writer” by Gloria Anzaldua first makes me reflect on how I have felt when, in a religious setting, watching someone speak in tongues. I feel as though I dont understand where this is coming from, I’m totally confused as it happens and I want a better understanding of what these people are going through. Anzaldua shows me that these same feeling are felt by people trying to understand female writers, but she is also reacting to the eyes that have been set apon her and others.

Anzaldua uses words of Cherrie Moraga to explain her “lack the language”. Even though Anzaldua and many other woman of color have “degrees, credentials and published books” she does not want to be “reduced to purveyors of resource list”. Through her writings and the writing of colored women Anzaldua does not want to tokenize the life and trials of womanhood that is not white.

She notes there is a differance between races but is afraid of making it too easy to make the blight of all races equal and even is afraid of becoming a sellout.”White eyes do not want to know us, they do not bother to learn our language, the language which reflects us” she realizes a lack of writing of the third word experience. Anzaldua is afraid of leaving behind the feelings and truths of the non-white female write to adopt the language and feeling of the white writer losing her native tongue when trying to enlighten others to the experiences of the third world. Speaking in tongues revealed itself to me as a soul search on what tongue to use in conveying ones feelings and life experiences.

Anzaldua feels that the the female third world writer has been stifled making her question herself Why am I compelled to write?” She finds strength in writing because she feels that writing “validates us a human” and encourages third world female writers to write fusing “personal experience and world view with the social reality we live in”

Donzell Evans

If writing is so empowering, why don’t some women want to write?

As a strong female personality, an aspiring writer, and a future teacher, the works of Helene Cixous and Gloria Anzaldúa illuminate a beautiful power that writing has, and personally resonate with me. The transformative power of female writing has been explored in our readings a lot from Cixous’s arguments we read last week about women’s writing empowering women and healing women on a personal as well as institutional level, to Gloria Anzaldúa’s self-professed intimate and immediate call to women to write, to even the coming of age victory of Precious Jones coming from writing. I happen to have faith like these women that writing is cathartic, empowering, and is an exceptional way for women to transcend societal limitations and lay claim to the power to their individuality and minds. All of these writers seem to agree with me, so I believed that this was a widely accepted belief.

However… I discovered that this is really not the case for all women.

I happen to teach a creative writing class to visually impaired students, and this weekend, I encountered particular resistance from one of my students. As female, from a traditional Chinese family, with a visual impairment, she could use the power of writing. She is the type of young woman Gloria Anzaldúa speaks to. Since October I have been trying to get this 16 year old girl to express herself, I have been giving her choices, and making it optional to share. I have basically been operating under the assumption that I am giving her the gift of empowerment. She does not agree. She groaned when she realized she was coming to my class and when I addressed her concerns openly she said the class was too much like school, that she usually felt stuck, and that maybe we could just talk or I could find some other hobby to share with the class.

My initial reaction was confusion, that turned to being a little pissed off. I thought I was helping her to claim her part of the world as a young woman of color with a disability. I have been working my butt off to help her overcome the boundaries of society, just like Sapphire and Helene Cixous and Gloria Anzaldúa would do, so why wasn’t she grateful and inspired?

“Speaking in Tongues” helped me to sort through this idea some more. If this young woman has the opportunity to write, why wouldn’t she take it? I looked at Anzaldúa’s commentary on the power of writing,

Writing is dangerous because we are afraid of what the writing reveals: the fears, the angers, the strengths of a woman under a triple or quadruple oppression. Yet in that very act lies our survival because a woman who writes has power. And a woman with power is feared, (Anzaldúa, 171)

This is potentially indicative of a bigger problem. Many women are resistant to reinventing ideas and taking claim through writing because they are afraid of being feared. Also, many women may have learned to be helpless and are comfortable in their role where they are without power. This is a worthwhile risk to give women the option to take charge and make their own world, however, what happens when the system itself has created women who do not like the feeling of being feared? What happens when we have women who have learned to feel the safety and accept the negative consequences of being submissive?

In many ways, I think I cope with this power and the resulting fear of being a female writer by becoming one of the “male-women” (167) that Anzaldúa refers to. I create an alter ego, a different self, that performs a more aggressive and male role. I enjoy the liberation and power of this when writing, but I would be wrong to think that this risk never scares me and that every female would respond to this type of gender performance and raw aggression and autonomy that writing gives. When it comes down to it, many women simply do not want this power. To be fair, many men do not want power and to be feared either, so does this mean that not all women can be empowered? Is writing/ feminism not for everyone?

I hope to empower this young women, transform her like Precious was transformed though the world of writing, but I am unsure how to tell her it’s ok to be scary, it’s ok to act a little like a guy, and it’s ok to be in control– even if you are afraid the whole time. Forcing her to write defeats the purpose of empowering her, and maybe writing is not the way for her, or many women to empower themselves because it is so inherently risky.

Butler & Anzaldúa: Transcendence of the Alternative Gender & The Voice

By Frank Miller

In my initial reading of Gloria Anzaldúa’s letter, “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter To 3rd World Women Writers,” I was reminded of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, and the claim she made regarding lesbianism. “The lesbian appears to be a third gender…a category that radically problematizes both sex and gender as stable political categories of description” (144). Anzaldúa appears to be making a very similar claim when speaking of “women of color” and “the lesbian of color,” which literally takes on, as well as transcends Butler’s argument. Anzaldúa writes, “the beginning woman of color is invisible both in the white male mainstream world and in the white feminist’s world… The lesbian of color is not only invisible, she doesn’t exist,” (165) and later writes, “man, like all other animals, fears and is repelled by that which he does not understand, and mere difference is apt to connote something malign” (166). Meaning that Anzaldúa’s lesbian of color, “problematizes both sex and gender” for man in his “stable” world of political categorization, thus making him “fearful” of what he cannot easily categorize or “understand.” Though Butler’s piece draws on Anzaldúa’s argument, what it lacks is the raw emotion and strong sense of womanhood that jumps from the page in “Speaking in Tongues.” Anzaldúa’s desired form: a letter, allows her to “approximate the intimate and immediate” relationship she shares with her hermanas as women writers, of color. Though their titles suggest it, women of color and lesbians of color, cannot be easily “categorized.” They are comprised of everyone and anyone who has been told to “scrape the dark off of [their] face…bleach [their] bones. Stop speaking in tongues, stop writing left-handed…to make it in a right-handed world” (166), permitting the ambigious group to transcend and even further “problematize sex and gender as stable political categories of description.” Her words are concise, and her plan, direct. Her words come from her experience with oppression, “we can’t transcend these dangers, can’t rise above them. We must go through them and hope we won’t have to repeat the performance” (165). To conclude her thoughts of the non-existent lesbian of color, she writes “our speech, too, is inaudible. We speak in tongues like the outcast and the insane” (165), providing readers with a taste of her own struggles and frustrations with the political categorizations in effect.

Anzaldúa calls out Third World women to take an assertive stance in their writing, in a very “Wretched of the Earth” Fanon-like white hot incendiary fashion. “We cannot allow ourselves to be tokenized. We must make our own writing and that of Third world women the first priority” (168).

Anzaldúa likens the act of writing to life, asserting that “what validates us as human beings validates us as writers” (170). In addition, she explores writing as a tool to measure the importance of life over death (what I interpreted, you can replace the word write/writing with live/living), “I write because I’m scared of writing but I’m more scared of not writing” (169) and also explores it as simply living, “forget the room of one’s own – write in the kitchen, lock yourself up in the bathroom. Write on the bus or the welfare line, on the job or during meals, between sleeping or waking…When you’re depressed, angry, hurt, when compassion and love possess you. When you cannot help but write” (170).

Anzaldúa concludes her last letter with: “Find the muse within you. The voice that lies buried under you, dig it up” (173). In Kitty Kelley’s Oprah: A Biography (for Veeser’s Biography course), Oprah speaks of “the voice” in reference to her failing show, The Women of Brewster Place. She states, “I thought I could make [the series] all right because I wanted it to be all right….But I wasn’t ready for it. My mistake was that I didn’t listen to the voice. Me! The one who always preaches ‘Listen to the voice,’ ‘Be guided by the voice,’ ‘Take direction from the voice,’…. The voice was speaking loud and clear and I didn’t take heed” (240). And as one of the most powerful women of color of the twentieth century, it seems as if listening to “the voice” is the smartest thing one can do.

Speaking in Tongues

Jackie Torres

The essay Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3^rd World Women Writers by Gloria Anzaldua relays a strong message. Her tone is rugid, fearless, and angry. She begins by defining what she feels is a “third world women writer”. Anzaldua goes on ranking women from the highest societal acceptance to the lowest, which she says are lesbian colored women.  Anzaldua is proud of where she comes from. She does not want to lose her cultural identity or language because she is afraid that society might find this to be a weakness revealed, as opposed to strength.

Anzaldua wants to promote women to liberate themselves to feel free and express themselves without fearing the thoughts of others. She asks, “Why do they fight us? Because they think we are dangerous beasts?”  Here she proposes a question.  Anzaldua becomes blunt about the real issue of a third world women writer. She feels society sees third world women writers as beasts that will be unleashed and reveal a truly intelligent and intellectual side that can intimidate men and society in general.

Although Anzaldua expresses herself with anger and with a courageous voice she does make some clarifications. She lets the reader know her intention with this essay which she begins by admitting it was essentially going to be a poem. Anzadula declares that she does not use society or the white man as an excuse. She is aware of her responsibilities and knows that there are certain jobs that the third world women may always be part of, for example, domestic work and hard labor. However, she encourages women to write. She does not write for fame or money. Writing is in some sense therapeutic. She feels this is a way of becoming liberated and letting other women know to do the same. She says, “No topic is too trivial”.  Anzadula feels that every topic is acceptable because there is someone who will always relate to the message some way or another. She admires Nellie Wong and uses some of her excerpts to create examples of what she is trying to dictate.

Anzaldua is strong and has a very unique sense of power. Her attitude is clear and precise. It is demonstrated through her choice words. She wants women to not necessarily write their feelings out, but to feel that they can do something other than depend on on a miracle given to them from someone else.  She wants women to find “the voice that lies buried under you”. Her words in the beginning are harsh and very frank. Yet, she ends her essay with “Love, Gloria”, which gives the reader a sense of calmness after a storm or smoothness after a witnessing of a tough exterior. This demonstrates that her opinions, thoughts, and overall advice to women are given from an honest place and well thought out intentions.

Taking Responsibility for the Third World Woman Writer.

The theory pieces I have examined over the last few weeks discuss the very distinct tie between women and sexuality. This week, Gloria Anzaldúa’s “Speaking In Tongues” is a commentary on race, a look at “the Third World woman writer.” (167) Like Monique Wittig, Anzaldúa sees a divide in the feminist movement, declaring that “the dangers we face as women writers of color are not the same as those of white women.” (165) However, where Wittig seeks to transcend, Anzaldúa seeks only for her readers to write and, through that simple act, find salvation.

There is a barrier between white women and women of color, Anzaldúa claims. Compared to them, women of color “never had any privileges…The schools we attended…did not give us the skills for writing nor the confidence that we were correct.” (165) Her writing implies a greater resentment towards a class disparity that puts women of color at a disadvantage. Even if rich white women are encouraged to write in a patronizing fashion, perhaps that is better than the feeling that “writing seem[s] so unnatural for me…” (166)

The patronization imbued in the white woman ironically permeates into mainstream feminist culture: “…followers [of the white feminist establishment] are notorious for ‘adopting’ women of color as their ’cause’ while still expecting us to adapt to their expectations and their language.” (167) Why bother attempting to “liberate” the woman of color at all, Anzaldúa asks, if the only aim is to conform her to your own way of thinking? This denial of diversity doesn’t help the white feminists’ cause any more than Wittig’s, who saw differences as excuses for segregation.

Where does a refusal to conform leave the “Third World Woman?” Anzaldúa cautions “We can’t do the white woman’s homework for her.” The solution against being “tokenized” is to exist as writers in larger numbers than before: “We must make our own writing and that of the Third World women the first priority.” (168) Anzaldúa believes that if women of color truly announced themselves in the literary world, they would be liberated, especially from the oppressors who claim to represent them.

With this in mind, Anzaldúa writes that it is time for women of color to be accountable for their part in what feels like a complex war between (and within) the genders. Yes, the woman of color often has domestic responsibilities that are inescapable: “…who has the time or energy to write after nurturing husband or lover, children, and often an outside job?” (170) In conceding the obvious, Anzaldúa finishes with a powerful declaration: “It’s too easy, blaming it all on the white man or white feminists or society or on our parents.” (171) Women of color should use their lives as a source of inspiration and not, as so many do, as an excuse for complacency, “a far more dangerous attitude than outrage.” (168 – Naomi Littlebear).

Parodying Virginia Woolf, Anzaldúa eschews “the room of one’s own” and calls upon women of color to “write in the kitchen, lock yourself up in the bathroom. Write on the bus…on the job…between sleeping or waking.” (170) Beyond pushing past domesticity, Anzaldúa warns that it is even more necessary to push past the fear that comes with writing about one’s life: “To write is to confront one’s demons, look them in the face and live to write about them.” The woman of color lacks fairytale endings in her arsenal but that is what makes her writing the key to her liberation, “because a woman who writes,” says Anzaldúa, “has power. And a woman with power is feared.” (171) The mainstream media often casts a condescending glance towards the plight of the woman of color, preferring instead to focus on Cinderellas and Snow Whites. Do not feel your story is not worth telling, Anzaldúa seems to say, when allowing the world to hear it could set you free.

The woman of color, Anzaldúa writes, are not meant to transcend their gender or color, or segregate from the feminist cause at large. If she simply took time out of her day to affirm her place within the feminist movement, to say, “I am here,” she would gain more power than ever thought possible.

Finding Oneself: A New Rhetoric

In “Speaking In Tongues: A Letter to 3^rd World Women Writers”, Gloria Andaldua states:

Who gave us [women of color] permission to perform the act of writing? Why does writing seem so unnatural for me? . . . The voice recurs in me: Who am I, a poor Chicanita from the sticks, to think I could write? How hard is it for us to think we can choose to become writers, much less feel and believe that we can. What have we to contribute, to give? Our own expectations condition us. Does not our class, our culture as well as the white man tell us writing is not for women such as us?” (Andaldua, 166)

Early in this essay, Andaldua announces her opposition of being labeled as a “third-world woman” whose self and voice is “silenced” by dichotomies of all kinds: that of other/white; that of male/female; that of illiteracy/literacy. “Perhaps if we become male-women or as middleclass as we can. Perhaps if we give up loving women, we will be worthy of having something to say worth saying.” (Andaldua, 167) Andaldua renounces the either/or, the favoritism, of an identity. She believes in non-binary identities that produce diverse writing angles.

            “The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy. It is the quest for the self, for the center of the self, which we women of color have come to think as “other” – the dark, the feminine.” (Andaldua, 169) Writing for Andaldua is indistinguishably related to the means of writing faces and souls as well as a cardinal means of conditioning the kinds of ongoing changes necessary in understanding oneself as a colored woman in a white feminist world.  In her essay she challenges women in particular those of color, to take on the responsibility of writing “organically”; which she defines as: “creating in your innards, in your gut and out of living tissue.” (Andaldua, 172) This type of organic writing is beautifully executed in this essay where; although it is a theorist (academic) text its epistolary form teaches without non white “right-handed world” traditions.

            In the first to last paragraph of the essay Andaldua says, “Throw away abstraction and the academic learning, the rules, the map, the compass. Feel your way without blinders. To touch more people, the personal realities and the social must be evoked. . .” (Andaldua, 173) Here and elsewhere Andaldua advocates a new form of rhetoric, and that is what Sapphire’s Push is for many. Sapphire’s use of broken language and untraditional conventions enables the readers to interpret the experiences in Precious’ world.

I stupid. I ain’ got no education even tho’ I not miss days of school. I talks funny. The air floats like water wif pictures around me sometime. Sometimes I can’t breathe. I’m a good girl. I don’t fucks boyz but I’m pregnant. My favher fuck me. And she know it. (Sapphire, 57)

 The use of this new rhetoric brought different ethnic communities together because the experience described evoked personal as well as social realities.

 

Anzaldúa: The Question of Writing & The Rhetoric of Alterity. L.R. Corcoran.

With so much emphasis put on it in Gloria Anzaldúa’s “Speaking In Tongues: A Letter To 3rd World Women Writers,” I believe it necessary to pose an initial query before delving into the rest of the piece: namely, what is “writing”? I believe this question to take on added significance in this our time of modernity, where text circulates freely in multifarious form. It has always struck me odd that so much power has been granted to a seemingly ordinary gerund, for we are in the midst of writing all the time. Thinking is an act of writing minus the pen; conversation, an act of writing that lacks a stenographer. When I get coffee in the morning, I “write” to the cashier that I would like it black and without sugar, and when I sleep at night my mind “writes” me to fey places of which I have no recollection upon waking. It then seems to me that “writing” is the most ordinary and pervasive act of the human mind.

Therefore, when writers speak of writing, which they are certainly wont to do, of what they really speak is when writing meets or fails to meet the requirements of a particular literary form. To wit, when I sit down to write, I seek to organize my thoughts against the backdrop of poetry, drama, fiction, letters, or essay. And It is in this clash between thought and form that a feminist criticism can be born. These literary genres are indeed the products of a culture of learning that was forged in the history of patriarchy and forces determined to defend the status quo; it is only in our recent history that the universities have opened their doors for women and minorities.

It is with this in mind, that Anzaldúa’s letters begin to take on significance. Her call is for women (and especially minority women) to challenge these forms, to distort them, to refract their experiences through them. “Through away your abstraction and the academic learning, the rules, the map and compass. Feel your way without blinders. To touch more people, the personal realities and the social must be evoked–not through rhetoric but through blood and pus and sweat” (Anzaldúa p. 173). This appeal to women writers is well founded: How can our literary canon be accurate of our common human experience while nearly excluding half of its participants? Indeed it is necessary to open the cannon and enfranchise all groups to be able to contribute to it. Though, in the above quote, I must quibble with Anzaldúa for using a trope (the metaphor of “blood and sweat and pus”) to argue against rhetoric.

There is a another inconsistency in her epistolary rhetoric, that I would like to touch on, but surely goes beyond the scope of this paper. That is, there is an implicit binary, if a writer (male or female) conceptualizes writing as a fetishized act. “The writing possesses me and propels me to leap into a timeless, spaceless no-place where I forget myself and feel I am the universe. This is power” (Anzaldúa p. 172). To separate oneself from the process of writing, to objectify it and bestow upon it a distant alterity, which once reconnected with provides a sense of completion and power, is, in effect, to “feminize” it, in the manner of Freud’s conception of the Oedipal complex. Here, writing is the mother’s lost phallus, that which will grant wholeness. It seems that Anzaldúa, in condemning patriarchy, has slipped into its logic. In fighting against the suppression of the other as manifested in social and societal relations, she solidifies the concept of the other on an ideological level. I don’t believe this to be sufficient enough criticism to condemn completely her battle-cry, but until the very concept of alterity is extinguished, it shall be a battle cry that needs to be sounded again and again.