Cherríe Moraga Quotes

I keep wanting to repeat over and over and over again, the pain and shock of difference, the joy of commonness, the exhilaration of meeting through incredible odds against it.

My real politicization began, not through the Chicano Movement but through the bold recognition of my lesbianism

The "unknown" is often depicted in racist literature as the "darkness" within a person. Similarly, sexist writers will refer to fear in the form of the vagina, calling it "the orifice of death." In contrast, it is a pleasure to read works such as Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, where fear and alienation are described as "the white ghosts." And yet, the bulk of literature in this country reinforces the myth that what is dark and female is evil. Consequently, each of us-whether dark, female, or both-has in some way internalized this oppressive imagery. What the oppressor often succeeds in doing is simply externalizing his fears, projecting them into the bodies of women, Asians, gays, disabled folks, whoever seems most "other."

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.'

What the oppressor often succeeds in doing is simply externalizing his fears, projecting them into the bodies of women, Asians, gays, disabled folks, whoever seems most "other."

But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity. He fears he will discover in himself the same aches, the same longings as those of the people he has shitted on. He fears the immobilization threatened by his own own incipient guilt. He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different. He fears the hatred, anger, and vengeance of those he has hurt.

I think: what is my responsibility to my roots-both white and brown, Spanish-speaking and English? 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

Revolution is not only won by numbers, but by visionaries, and if artists aren't visionaries, then we have no business doing what we do. I call myself a Chicana writer. Not a Mexican-American writer, not an Hispanic writer, not a half-breed writer. To be a Chicana is not merely to name one's racial/cultural identity, but also to name a politic, a politic that refuses assimilation It acknowledges our mestizaje-Indian, Spanish, and Africano into the US mainstream.

The challenge is to remain as culturally specific and culturally complex as possible, even in the face of mainstream seduction to do otherwise.

…The road that I have walked in my life as a mixed blood Chicana and as a lesbian has more and more put me…(pause) I am always the blood quantum that I am. But culturally and the life that I’ve lived and the values with which I’ve raised my own children , the relationship I have with my family and my partner and all those other things is pretty Chicano. So I don’t feel like it’s prescriptive – how one deals with being biracial. When I said I refuse the split, I really felt like typically what happens in a white dominated society is that you’re encouraged to assimilate anyway. So as a mixed blood person, you can get an incredible amount of benefits from that assimilation…

it wasn't until long after my graduation from the private college I'd attended in Los Angeles, that I realized the major reason for my total alienation classmates was rooted in class and culture. CLICK.

to change the world, we have to change ourselves-even sometimes out most cherished, block-hard convictions. I must confess I hate the thought of this. Change don't come easy. For anyone. But this state of war we live in, this world on fire, provides us with no other choice.

What grew from that discussion was the realization that in order for him to create an authentic alliance with me, he must deal with the primary source of his own sense of oppression. He must, first, emotionally come to terms with what it feels like to be a victim. If he-or anyone-were to truly do this, it would be impossible to discount the oppression of others, except by again forgetting how we have been hurt. And yet, oppressed groups are forgetting all the time. There are instances of this in the rising Black middle class, and certainly an obvious trend of such "unconsciousness" among white gay men. Because to remember may mean giving up whatever privileges we have managed to squeeze out of this society by virtue of our gender, race, class, or sexuality.

The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression from a theoretical base. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our own oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place.

I don’t think femme-butch categories necessarily reproduce male-female gender relations and stereotypes about lesbians. I’m not sure Medea really thinks this either, but she does get angry at Luna when she perceives her as trying to act like a man and then resents Luna when she does not assume the power of a man. In other words, she is confused and a realistic, frightened character, afraid of losing her son and her land forever.