Talking Back: Voices of Color (BOOK REVIEW)
Talking
Back: Voices of Color
Edited
by Nellie Wong
Red
Letter Press
Paperback,
$15.00
240
pages, Illustrated
ISBN:
978-0-932323-32-3
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“As a feminist of
Chinese American roots, my disrespected skin color and low-paid
status as a secretarial worker shocked me into a realization that
I've embraced now for many years: the knowledge that racist, sexist,
anti-queer, anti-trans, anti-worker discrimination leveled against
one is leveled against all.
We must seek integration
into revolutionary change, not into business-as-usual capitalist
America that puts people of color and women in chains. That's what's
necessary. Through this collection, readers are given a rare jewel: a
gem ablaze with the colors of working-class voices, rather than
abstractions from lofty academic towers.
The offerings... speak
out [about] the fight for quality public education, reproductive
justice and freedom of expression, and an end to police violence and
war... and much more. To whom do we talk back? To those who will
silence us... These voices of color matter. They need to be heard.”
-- Excerpted from the
Introduction (page 10)
Nellie
Wong was born in Oakland, California at a time when Chinese females
were uniformly raised to obey rather than question authority.
Consequently, she would dutifully marry, have kids and take
employment as a secretary, all in accordance with narrowly-defined
cultural expectations.
However,
Nellie finally started to shed society's shackles in the Seventies
when she started taking courses in writing and Feminist and
Asian-American Studies at San Francisco State University. Curiously,
that path in pursuit of personal liberation simultaneously made her
very aware that members of other minority groups were also
marginalized, whether black, brown, indigenous, lesbian, gay or
transgendered.
Nellie subsequently not only found her voice as a
politically-motivated poet, but she got involved in the liberation
movement as an organizer and activist. And over the ensuing decades
she has remained an unrepentant advocate for social justice.
So,
it only makes sense that at 80 years of age, she'd serve as editor
for Talking Back: Voices of Color. The book is a collection of
enlightening essays authored by a rainbow coalition of next
generation firebrands exploring a litany of hot-button issues ranging
from racism and feminism to terrorism and immigration to education
and sexual preference.
Global
in scope, the opus not only addresses the concerns of the oppressed
in the U.S. but of folks as far afield as the Middle East, Australia,
Central America, Europe, Asia, Canada, South America and even
Australia. Leave it to Nellie to sum up the tome's simple aim ever so
eloquently by quoting the late James Baldwin who, as she's quick to
point out, was both black and gay: “You write to change the world.”
Hear, hear!
To
order a copy of Talking Back: Voices of Color, visit:
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