Her War Story: Twentieth-Century Women Write About War - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809322463 ISBN 13: 9780809322466

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Sayre P. Sheldon chose the twentieth century for this collection of women's war writing because women's roles in war have changed dramatically in this century. The twentieth century has redefined the meaning of combat and expanded the territory of war to include women in larger numbers than ever before. When the technological advances of modern war began to target civilians, the home front became the front line. Women took an active part in war whether or not by choice, often by moving into occupations previously closed to them. Women covered wars for their newspapers, wrote war propaganda for their governments, published their wartime diaries, described fighting alongside men, and used wartime experience for their fiction and poetry.
 

Women writers also chose the right to imagine war, just as men for centuries had written about war without actually experiencing it. Women writers anthologized here include Anna Akhmatova, Vera Brittain, Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Colette, Martha Gellhorn, H.D., Etty Hillesum, Kä the Kollwitz, Doris Lessing, Amy Lowell, Katherine Mansfield, Mary McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Parker, Mary Lee Settle, Gertrude Stein, Huong Tram, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Mitsuye Yamada.

About this title

About the Author:

Sayre P. Sheldon teaches at Boston University. The founding president of Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), she continues to serve as a national board member to the organization under its current name, Women's Action for New Directions.

Review:

“ Her War Story immediately engaged me. These women's varied voices underscore how wars seep into the nooks and crannies of everyday life.”            — Cynthia Enloe, author of Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives



“ Sheldon’ s collection of excerpts offers an impressive array of disaparate and passionate voices speaking about humankind’ s most destructive activity. . . . Sheldon lets the 70 voices speak, from the glamour or necessity of war to its horror. . . . An anthology of this sort was long overdue.” — Choice  

“ Sheldon’ s writers convey the anguish of combat through literary skill and imagination.” — Voice Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0809322463
• ISBN 13: 9780809322466
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Sheldon Sayre P.