This Bridge Called My Back by Cherríe L. Moraga

As showcased, Moraga’s mother and the “darker women” were similar and understood each other’s pain for being silenced in society for being who they were. Moraga explains that time and time the “darker women come to me… I pass through their hands the head of my mother… they cradle her silence nodding to me” (Moraga, 1986, p 11). However, as a Chicana, she speaks out for her mother because she is constantly silenced for not only being a woman, but also because she is a woman of color.

Moraga claims that she is biracial, being part white, but also women of color due to her mother. When Moraga describes how as her mother was growing up, she learned different things but was always silenced due to her color, which significantly allows the readers to understand why Moraga was so eager to speak out for her mother. It seems as if Moraga’s motivation in speaking out for her mother is because her mother, as a woman of color, cannot speak out in society as freely as other women who are non-colored.

From this, it can be predicted that Moraga is biracial seeing how she describes herself as “a white girl gone brown” (Moraga, 1986, p 10). Moraga repeatedly describes herself as “a white girl gone brown to the blood color of my mother speaking for her”( Moraga, 1986, p 10). This poem which is based off of Moraga’s mother, who is silenced by society due to the fact that she is a women of color. In Cherrie Moraga’s poem, For the Color of My Mother, Moraga clearly hints at the fact that her main motivation in writing was so that she could voice out for her mother, who is also a women of color.

This Bridge Called My Back by Cherríe L. Moraga