Women on war : an international anthology of women's writings from antiquity to the present / edited and with an introduction by Daniela Gioseffi.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gioseffi, Daniela.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women and peace.

Women and war.

Physical Description:

xl, 375 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2003.

Summary:

From Margaret Atwood to Daisy Zamora, Simone de Beauvoir to Alice Walker, many of the world's greatest women writers have reflected upon one of humanity's most tragic and powerful experiences: war. Yet most of these writings are little known, just as women's perceptions of war remain largely absent from the history books. Women on War gathers together writings from more than 150 women -- including renowned poets, novelists, essayists, journalists, and activists, as well as ordinary women with first-hand experience of armed conflict. Spanning the globe and traversing more than two centuries, the pieces in this compelling collection range from an ancient verse by Sappho to an essay by Arundhati Roy about the meanings of September 11. In voices that are gripping, mournful, defiant, and often surprisingly hopeful, these writers join to produce a portrait of wartime experience that has too seldom been seen, and a plea for peace that has too seldom been heard. The first edition of Women on War won wide critical acclaim and an American Book Award. This long-awaited new edition, which contains nearly 40 percent new material and includes responses to the conflicts of our own times, is certain to earn a place as a landmark work for the twenty-first century.

Contents:

Introduction: Cassandra's Daughters xvii

Part 1 Prophecies and Warnings

Lament to the Spirit Of War / Enheduanna (circa 2300 B.C.E.) 3

Patriotism as a "Menace to Liberty" / Emma Goldman (1869-1940) 4

Militarism as a Province of Accumulation / Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919) 5

O Earth, Unhappy Planet Born to Die / Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1956) 6

From The Face of War / Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) 7

The Progress / Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) 10

Declaration of Love / Carilda Oliver Labra (b. 1922) 11

Is There a Difference Between Men and Women and What If (This Week) / Grace Paley (b. 1922) 12

Children of the Epoch / Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923) 14

The Nightmare Factory / Maxine Kumin (b. 1925) 15

From Cassandra / Christa Wolf (b. 1929) 17

From Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War / Rosalie Bertell (b. 1929) 20

From Dark Fields of the Republic: Six Narratives / Adrienne Rich (b. 1929) 23

Stockpiling / Jayne Cortez (b. 1936) 24

Words Spoken by Pasternak During a Bombing / Bella Akhmadulina (b. 1937) 27

From The New Nuclear Danger / Helen Caldicott (b. 1939) 28

Bread / Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) 39

From Blood Rites: The Religion of War / Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941) 41

Among Tall Buildings / Molly Peacock (b. 1947) 49

Borders / Rochelle Ratner (b. 1948) 49

The Fifties / Wendy Rose (b. 1948) 52

At Ground Zero in Hiroshima / Ann Druyan (b. 1949) 53

To the Soldiers of El Salvador / Lilliam Jimenez (b. circa 1950) 54

Sex and Death and the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals / Carol Cohn (b. 1951) 56

Bioterror and Biosafety / Vandana Shiva (b. 1952) 69

From Misogynies: Crawling from the Wreckage / Joan Smith (b. 1953) 70

Women and Conflict: A Serbian Perspective / Jasmina Tesanovic (b. 1954) 80

A Pure, High Note of Anguish / Barbara Kingsolver (b. 1955) 86

Why Missile Defense Will Not Make Us Safer / Theresa Hitchens (b. 1959) 88

The Algebra of Infinite Justice / Arundhati Roy (b. 1961) 90

Part 2 Violence and Mourning

From Song of pathos and Wrath and Eighteen Verses in Hun's Flute Melody / Tsai Wen-Ji (162-239) 101

Elegy for My Brother / al-Khansa (circa 575-646) 104

The War of 1793 / Diodata Saluzzo (1774-1840) 104

From Hospital Sketches / Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) 105

The First Long Range Artillery Fire on Leningrad / Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) 107

From Not So Quiet ... / Helen Zenna Smith (1896-1985) 107

From All Said and Done / Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) 111

From The War / Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) 115

The Son of Man / Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1999) 116

Face Lost in the Wilderness / Fadwa Tuqan (b. 1917) 118

From The Wind Blows Away Our Words / Doris Lessing (b. 1919) 120

Death in Slow Motion / Andree Chedid (b. 1921) 127

The Star Obscure / Gueni Zaimof (b. 1922) 131

The War / Vesna Parun (b. 1922) 131

From Camp Notes / Mitsuye Yamada (b. 1923) 133

Evasion / Claribel Alegria (b. 1924) 135

Eyes of an Afghan Child / Nguyet Tu (b. circa 1925) 136

Hellish Years After Hellish Days / Toyomi Hashimoto (b. 1925) 137

Viet Minh and Famine / Tra Thi Nga (b. 1927), Wendy Wilder Larsen 142

From Comfort Woman / Maria Rosa Henson (1928-1996) 144

Songs of Bread and An Armenian Looking at Newsphotos of the Cambodian Deathwatch / Diana Der-Hovanessian (b. circa 1930) 147

The Enemy Army Has Passed Through / Jaya Mehta (b. 1932) 149

The Colonization of Our Pacific Islands / Chailang Palacios (b. 1933) 149

From Sorrow Mountain / Ani Pachen (b. 1933), Adelaide Donnelley 151

It's Not the Fear of Shivering / Gulten Akin (b. 1933) 157

Hatred / Maire Mhac an tSaoi (b. circa 1935) 157

The Bombing of Baghdad / June Jordan (1936-2002) 158

From Maneuvers / Cynthia Enloe (b. 1938) 161

"Don't Speak the Language of the Enemy!" and The Exotic Enemy / Daniela Gioseffi (b. 1941) 165

From The Price of Freedom / Ellen Ndeshi Namhila (b. 1941) 170

From Beyond the Limbo Silences / Elizabeth Nunez (b. 1942) 173

Certain Winds from the South / Ama Ata Aidoo (b. 1942) 175

Report from Vietnam for International Women's Day / Minerva Salado (b. 1944) 181

"The Situation in Soweto Is Not Abnormal" / Mavis Smallberg (b. 1945) 181

Friend and Foe and To One in Beirut / Karen Alkalay-Gut (b. 1945) 182

The Blood of Others / Gioconda Belli (b. 1948) 184

Morning in the Park Among the Nannies / Savyon Liebrecht (b. 1948) 185

From Boys in Zinc / Svetlana Alexiyevich (b. 1948) 193

From S.: The Camps

Bosnia / Slavenka Drakulic (b. 1949) 200

From The Other Side of Silence / Urvashi Butalia (b. 1952) 203

From A Girl Soldier's Story / Marevasei Kachere (b. circa 1961) 207

The Impact of Genocide on Women / Jean Kadalika Uwankunda (b. 1966) 212

Part 3 Courage and Resistance

The Deliverance of Argos / Adelaide-Gillette Dufresnoy (1765-1825) 217

A National Crime / Ida Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) 219

From Women and Labour: Women and War / Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) 221

Finnish Champion / Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) 223

The Women Take a Hand / Agnes Smedley (1892-1950) 224

Verses To Chekia / Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941) 228

The Drought Breaks / Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) 229

Political Activism and Art / Lenore Marshall (1899-1971) 232

Kathe Kollwitz / Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) 234

The Artist's Rebellious Integrity / Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923) 238

And Still I Rise / Maya Angelou (b. 1928) 240

Memory Says Yes / Margaret Randall (b. 1930) 241

From Sula / Toni Morrison (b. 1931) 242

The Parachutist's Wife / Sandra M. Gilbert (b. 1936) 247

Nuclear Bomb Testing on Human Guinea Pigs / Darlene Keju-Johnson (b. 1936) 249

I Am Your Horse in the Night / Luisa Valenzuela (b. 1938) 252

Antigone / Ileana Malancioiu (b. 1940) 255

From The House of the Spirits: The Hour of Truth / Isabel Allende (b. 1942) 255

Blind, Unpredictable Terror / Ruth Rosen (b. 1945) 261

They Followed Us into the Night / Michele Najlis (b. 1946) 262

Guatemala, Your Blood / Alenka Bermudez (b. circa 1950) 263

Return / Carolyn Forche (b. 1950) 264

If Someone Else Is Suffering / Hannah Safran (b. 1950), Donna Spiegelman 267

The Bath / Kimiko Hahn (b.1955) 272

From The Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Childhood / Molyda Szymusiak (b. 1962) 275

Three Poems / Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) (Afghanistan) 283

I'll Never Return / Meena (1957-1987)

Meena / Reza Farmand (b. circa 1950)

For the Women of Afghanistan / Sheema Kalbasi (b. circa 1965)

We Are All Women in Black / Women in Black of Belgrade 287

Part 4 Hope and Survival

To an Army Wife in Sardis / Sappho (circa 610 b.c.e.) 293

From Peace and Bread in Time of War / Jane Addams (1860-1935) 293

Yes to the Earth / Sibilla Alermo (1876-1960) 295

Free Women Blooming from Old Battlefields / Ch'iu Chin (1879-1907) 296

In Defense of the United Nations / Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) 297

I Have All the Passion of Life / Lolita Lebron (b. 1919) 299

Women Know a Lot of Things / Meridel Le Sueur (1923-1996) 301

Making Peace and What It Could Be / Denise Levertov (1923-1997) 304

On a Japanese Beach / Nina Cassian (b. 1924) 306

From Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered / Ruth Kluger (b. 1931) 307

The Future / Daisy al-Amir (b. 1935) 309

The Spoils of War / Lynne Sharon Schwartz (b. 1939) 313

Ghosts and Echoes: Letter from Ground Zero / Robin Morgan (b. 1941) 315

A Forgiving Land / Lady Borton (b. 1942) 321

My Son's Childhood / Xuan Quynh (1942-1988) 324

Holding the Line at Greenham Common: On Being Joyously Political in Dangerous Times / Ann Snitow (b. 1943) 325

Only Justice Can Stop a Curse / Alice Walker/Zora Neale Hurston (b. 1944) 333

Black Woman / Nancy Morejon (b. 1944) 336

Letter to an Iraqi Woman / Mairead Corrigan Maguire (b.

1944) 337

Women and Ecology / Petra Kelly (1947-1992) 340

Black Hills Survival Gathering, 1980 / Linda Hogan (b. 1947) 344

A New Dawn in Town / Flora Brovina (b. 1949) 346

Song of Hope and When We Go Home Again / Daisy Zamora (b. 1959) 346

A Time of Cannons Comes Flying / Ana Istaru (b. 1960) 347

Tough Love / Michelle Chihara (b. 1974) 350.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-364) and index.

ISBN:

1558614087

1558614095

OCLC:

51519742