This project explores the term “Third World Women” and its varied usage during the Feminist Poetry Movement. Feminists of color used this term to express solidarity with women across the world. As Cherríe Moraga, Chicana writer and feminist, writes in the fourth edition of This Bridge Called My Back: “We are ‘third world’ consciousness within the first world. We are…in concert with women across the globe” (xix-xx). In Third World Women and conditions: five, published in 1972 and 1979 respectively, American women of color sought to unify this community through poetry and prose. In Up From Under, published between 1970 and 1973, American white women responded with what was often read as tokenized images of Vietnamese and African women. Jo Carrillo’s critique of this tokenization, “And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You,” exemplifies the tension between these women as they search for a common feminist movement.
-Emma McTague
Links to Posts (in order):
Interpreting Third World Women
“Before I Dare Reach Out and Touch Your Hand”: Up From Under
“I am Brown”: Third World Women and History
“I Walk in the History of My People”: Third World Women and Heritage
“Where Will You Be?”: Third World Women and Resistance