Pages 40 - 68 Summary

"Raw Experience": Moraga contemplates how her actions seem to occur without her intending them, like she is the passenger on some autonomous machine.

"La Guera": Moraga, the child of a Mexican woman and a white man, reflects on how her light skin—she looks nearly white—made life easier for her as a child. It was not until she accepted her lesbianism that she could identify with the oppression other groups faced, like dark-skinned Mexicans or the very poor. The moment she realized this was a defining moment in her thought, for she realized that oppression and marginalization could never be dealt with from a purely theoretical perspective. They are very real and painful things and one cannot just deal with them abstractly; they must be felt.

It is also important for any activist to realize that the danger...