Hamermesh 1

Mia Hamermesh
Professor Galvan
Community & Collaboration
28 November 2016
All For One
I recently had the opportunity to see the play Notes From the Field by Anna Deavere
Smith. It was a one woman show starring Smith and composed of interviews from various people
involved in the school-to-prison pipeline. Smith told the story of Bree Newsome, a black activist
who worked with environmental advocacy groups to scale the flagpole at the South Carolina
capitol building and remove the Confederate flag. In her interview, Newsome made a point to
emphasize the importance of her community, the Black Lives Matter movement, coming together
with another movement, the predominantly white environmental activists. Both communities
worked together to obtain the same goal of removing the flag. Beyond activism, working within
a community is beneficial to achieving goals. Writings from the early 1900s also discuss the
importance of support and collaboration through the portrayal of the Bloomsbury group. Those
ideas are later revisited in feminist writings of Cherre Moraga, Genny Lim, and Toni Cade
Bambara in the 1980s. While writers need their own space to explore themselves, they often find
comfort among other people to create their own best work. Finding and working within a
community, and often multiple communities, is essential to creating art and making a difference.
There is comfort in working with a group of likeminded individuals. The Bloomsbury
group was known for creating a community which fostered art and supported creative thinking,
even if that was not what outsiders believed of it. In an unfinished memoir about Bloomsbury,
Desmond MacCarthy writes, Bloomsbury is neither a movement, nor a push, but only a group

Hamermesh 2
of old friends; whose affection and respect for each other has stood the test of nearly thirty years
and who intellectual candour makes their company agreeable to each other (MacCarthy 27).
Their organization existed to encourage one anothers work and stimulate their best ideas. While
many viewed their formation as exclusionary of other artists at the time, they were merely
present to bolster one anothers creativity. In her political activities, Moraga recognizes the
importance of working within communities and acknowledging other ones with similar goals. In
reference to how feminism of color was shaped in the 1970s, Moraga writes, We recognized and
acknowledged our internally colorized status as the children of Native and African peoples and
found political alliance in the great granddaughters of the disenfranchised Chinese railroad
workers of the late 1800s and the daughter-survivors of the internment of Japanese Americans
during World War II (Moraga xvi-xvii). As an activist, it is impossible to insight change
individually. It is imperative to form a community by seeking assistance from other individuals
with the same goals. Beyond that, it is fundamental to expand that community by assisting other
differently-abled communities of activists. Moraga details this through her connection of her own
coloredness to the historic struggles of other exploited peoples. Although she does not belong to
such backgrounds, she uses her own personal experiences from her community to embrace their
communities. Not only does collaboration stimulate a writers growth and open opportunities for
their best work, it opens their eyes, offers them connections to different perspectives and a wider
scope on the world.
Community and validation is most important for activism, especially when it is
unexpected or not assumed to be present. Genny Lims poem Wonder Woman details a firstperson narrative of loneliness and the speakers search for familiarity around her. She says, I
wonder if the woman in mink is content / If the stockbroker's wife is afraid of growing old / If

Hamermesh 3
the professor's wife is an alcoholic / If the woman in prison is me (Lim 23-6). The speaker
connects a myriad of different women to herself, tying together their cultures and communities to
create familiarity out of the loneliness. As the poem progresses, it takes on an increasingly
political tone, emphasizing the importance of unity amongst women. Why must woman stand
divided? / Building the walls that tear them down? / A woman is a ritual / A house that must
accommodate (Lim 43-4, 48-9). Here, the speaker emphasizes the importance of community,
especially in regard to feminism. Women divided is harmful; each woman working directly
against the positive actions of the previous. The speaker is emphasizing the importance of a
community to bind together to build each other up rather than tear each other down. The speaker
calls women to action, encouraging them to connect with each other and build a diverse
community unified by their sex. When working together, women will not be self-destructive, and
their community will provide comfort and solace in their effort.
While Lim highlights an ideal picture of unilateral feminism, Moraga details the multiple
facets of the movement she is involved in and highlights the importance of being invested in the
cause she is fighting for. She explains how she became disillusioned with the objective she was
fighting for. Moraga writes, In the mid-70s, feminism, too, betrayed us in its institutionalized
Euro-centrism, its class prejudice, and its refusal to integrate a politic that proffered whole
freedom for women of color (Moraga xvi). The us to which Moraga is referring is the women
of color within the feminist movement. In this passage, Moraga uses harsh diction to emphasize
the betrayal caused by the realization that the feminism for which she had been fighting did not
support her own well being as a woman of color. The words betrayed and refusal suggests
animosity from the overall feminist movement towards Moragas subsection of that group. It
alienates her within the movement, emphasizing how feminists are not concerned with the rights

Hamermesh 4
of women of color. The use of the word institutionalized suggests the inevitability of this rift
between feminists and women of color feminists. It has been believed for so long that white
people are the pinnacle of importance, and there is no way for the movement for equality for
women of color to be recognized as tantamount to the overall feminist plight. Moraga goes on to
write, My disillusionment in those movements marked my own coming of age politically, for it
required of me, as it did for so many women of color, the creation of a critical consciousness
(Moraga xvi). Moraga has been surrounded by a subsection of the larger movement, only
realizing the existence the other women of color feminists. By recognizing the mass feminist
movement does not support her own beliefs, she is pushed to make a decision about whether or
not to continue to work with them. Although Moraga had in a way been let down by the
community of feminism, she was promptly consoled by the women of color feminist community,
creating her political critical consciousness that fueled her artwork and activism.
In her foreword for the novel This Bridge Called My Back, Toni Cade Bambara
repeatedly highlights differences and disparate communities, but in turn uses that to bring those
groups together. In the beginning of her foreword, she lays out a sequence of different names for
groups of people, ethnicities, communities, et cetera. She writes, Blackfoot amiga Nisei
hermana Down Home Up Souf Sistuh sister El Barrio suburbia Korean The Bronx Lakota
Menominee Cubana Chinese Puertoriquena reservation Chicana (Bambara vi). She brings in
the names of all these different communities, seemingly randomly. But the purpose of
highlighting these with deliberate spacing is to prove that they are all interconnected. Beyond
any one individual needing to rely on a community, all communities are dependent upon and
more similar to other communities. Bambara goes on to write, Now that we've begun to break
the silence and begun to break through the diabolically erected barriers and can hear each other

Hamermesh 5
and see each other, we can sit down with trust and break bread together (Bambara vi). At this
point, not only is it a possibility to work across communities, it is a necessity. By collaborating
across communities, individuals learn more about themselves, in addition to learning about other
cultures, which improves their ability to speak up for an issue and become an activist about
something outside of their own community. I am a Jew, and I am relatively familiar with the
difficulties faced by the Jewish community across the world. I feel like I could become an
advocate for Jewish issues. However, I know that I am not as well versed in the hardships of
many other communities, so I have made an effort to learn. I participate in volunteering trips
through my synagogue, during which I work at various food banks and interact with a variety of
different communities. I learn about their communities, but because I am with my synagogue I
am also learning more about my own Jewish community.
Many different writers emphasize the value of their own individuality in their work.
Beyond that, many more value working amongst communities of like-minded individuals,
encouraging one another and stimulating each other to do their greatest work. Above that, more
and more come out saying the best method is to create work that combines the communities of
themselves, but also takes into account other communities with similar goals or similar histories.
Another one of Smiths vignettes in Notes From the Field referred to Niya Kenny, who was
explaining why she was filming a police officer arresting one of her classmates. The overall
answer was, it didnt make sense not to. The only thing that made sense to Niya was to be
supportive of her classmate. Similarly, when writers and activists seek a community, it is only
logical they find one the reciprocates support for them.

Hamermesh 6

Bibliography
Bambara, Toni Cade. Foreword. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical
Women of Color. Ed. Gloria Anzalda and Cherre Moraga. 2nd edition. New York:
Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983. vi-viii. Print.
Lim, Genny. Wonder Woman. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of
Color. Ed. Gloria Anzalda and Cherre Moraga. 2nd edition. New York: Kitchen
Table/Women of Color Press, 1983. 25-26. Print.
MacCarthy, Desmond. Bloomsbury, An Unfinished Memoir. The Bloomsbury Group: A
Collection of Memoirs and Commentary. Ed. S. P. Rosenbaum. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1975. 2324. Print.
Moraga, Cherre. From Inside the First World Foreword. This Bridge Called My Back:
Writings by Radical Women of Color. Ed. Gloria Anzalda and Cherre Moraga. 3rd
edition. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 2001. xv-xxxi. Print.