Practicing Transgression: Radical Women of Color for the 21st Century

CONFERENCE REPORT Practicing Transgression Radical Women ofColor for the 21st Century MARTHA AREVALO DUFFIELD AND KARINA LISSETTE CÉSPEDES FEBRUARY 7-10, 2002, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY This Bridge is a manifesto—the 1981 declaration ofa new politics: "U.S. Third World Feminism." Nogreat de-colonial writer,jrom Fanon, Shaarawi, Blackhawk, or Sartre, to Mountain WojfWoman, de Beauvoir, Saussure, or Newton could have alone proclaimed this "politic born o/necessity." This politic denies no truths: its luminosities drive into and through our bodies. Writers and readers alike become shape-shifters, are invited to enter the shaman/witness state, to invoke power differently. "U.S. Third World Feminism" requires a re-peopling: the creation ofplanetary citizen-warriors. This book is a guide that directs citizenry shadowed in hate, terror, suffering, disconnection, and pain toward the light ofsocialjustice, gender and erotic liberation, peace, and revolutionary love. This Bridge transits our dreams, and brings them to the real. —Chela Sandoval, conference participant The twentieth anniversary of the women of color feminist classic1 This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women ofColor, edited by Cherrie L. Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldua, was celebrated at the University of California, Berkeley with a four-day conference called "Practicing Transgression: Radical Women ofColor for the 21st Century." The conference focused on the scholarly and activist legacy and impact ofThis Bridge Called My Backand showcased howThis Bridge has inspired the work ofmany activists and scholars inside and outside the U.S. As a women of color feminist classic, the book has not only had an impact on the activism and scholarship by women ofcolor but it has also [Meridians.-jeminism, race, transnarionalism 2002, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 125-32]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 125 endured its own migratory history and marginalization from feminist theorizing. Persephone Press, a white women's press located in Watertown, Massachusetts, originallypublishedThisBridge in 1981. When Persephone Press was unable to continue with its operations, This Bridge went out ofprint. In the spring of1983, the co-editors ofthe book negotiated retrieval and control ofthe book, whose second edition was conceived and actualized entirely by women ofcolor and subsequently republished by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in New York. Unfortunately Kitchen Table ceased operation in 1995, and This Bridge once again was out ofprint. Five years later, in the spring of2000, Third Woman Press began conversations with the co-editors in order to acquire the rights to republish and thus keep This Bridge Called My Back in print. Both editors believed that Third Woman Press, run by women ofcolor, was the best place to print the revised third edition. It is unfortunate that Third Women Press, founded in 1979 by Norma Alarcón, has become virtually the only surviving press in the U.S. from the 1970s and early 1980s period ofwomen ofcoloractivism. Third Woman Press is keptalive by volunteers and interns who ensured the success of both the revised third edition ofThis Bridge and the conference itself. Third Woman Press joined forces with the Bridge Collective, which formed to organize the conference. News of"Practicing Transgression" quickly spread, and, just as quickly, the Bridge Collective became inundated with queries about the conference. At times some of us were extremely worried about not having enough space for the number of people interested in attending. At the midway point ofplanning, everythingwas moving forward more smoothly than expected, but little did we know ofthe disaster thatwas to come. From mid-September through the following January, travel to the conference became a huge concern for everyone, due to the events ofSeptember 11 on the EastCoast. Conference planning slowed down and it looked as ifthe conference might not happen . It was not until the end ofthe year that invited speakers began to reconfirm their participation. The "Practicing Transgression" conference would not have been possible without a grant from the Ford Foundation, the labor ofthe staffof Third Woman Press, and the organizing by the Bridge Collective.2 The Bridge Collective consisted ofstaffmembers from Third Woman Press, UC Berkeley faculty, undergraduate and graduate students from various departments including Ethnic Studies, African-American Studies, Spanish, and Portuguese, as well as recent graduates of UC Berkeley 126...