ABSTRACT
The struggle 'to be whole' and the concern 'to make authentic bridges' are both simple and profound comments on what should be the major preoccupation of women learning liberation. The women's movement has always had a strong educational component, in the sense that liberation has to be learned as well as created; but it has never been a merely intellectual affair. So long as men have written the history books and controlled 'the general currency of thought' the philosophy and agitation, the poetry and literature, the art and the politics of women have been obliterated from the records. For the women writing in This Bridge Called My Back, the lived experience of racism is more important than the experience of sexism. For many radical feminists the logical development of feminism is political lesbianism, but whilst separatism might be a solution at a personal level it is unlikely to provide a comprehensive solution for societal reorganisation.
