In traditional cultures we turn to our elders to give us the guidance of their long experience. Some young people today, I find, think that because t… - Ana Castillo

white society insists that only European history and Greco-Roman civilization have intellectual importance and relevance to our society. The legacies of Amerindians from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego are considered primitive. The ignorance of white dominant society about our ways, struggles in society, history, and culture is not an innocent and passive ignorance, it is a systematic and determined ignorance. The omission in most literature of the history and presence of millions of residents who inhabited these lands long before European occupation forces us to read between the lines. If reading between the lines is what white feminists have had to do with the "classics," it most certainly is what we do, as educated U.S. Mexic Amerindians with all that is handed to us through literature and

The road in either direction
is neither longer nor shorter,
nor more narrow nor wider
than the fear that closes your heart.

And life is in my hands,
suckling at my breast,
thrives on the rhythm of my beating heart,
warmth of my throbbing belly.