Women in a World at War Front Cover

Paperback / softback
ISBN: 9780889224834
Pages: 320
Pub. Date: October 1 2003
Dimensions: 8.5" x 5.5" x 0.8125"
Rights: Available: WORLD
Categories
Non-Fiction / SOC028000

  • SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies

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Women in a World at War
Seven Dispatches from the Front
By Madeleine Gagnon
Translated by Phyllis Aronoff & Howard Scott

In 1999, poet and novelist Madeleine Gagnon undertook to document the experience of women in the many war zones at the end of a “century of ashes” through their own eyes and in their own words. Her record of those encounters boldly confronts the harshest realities of and asks the most difficult questions about not only the horrors of war, but also the quest for justice, the experience of love and compassion, the inextinguishable hope for the future, and the will to live—the humanity that endures against all odds.

Travelling to Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, Gagnon talked with women of all ages and social classes: those who fought side-by-side with men in wars of independence; who suffered terrible abuse in war; who lost their men, their homes, their children, their entire families; women working to heal the survivors, and those involved in different peace movements. She explores why women themselves have not found a way to put an end to war, why they continue, from generation to generation, to raise sons who make war and oppress women, what stake women themselves might have in war. And she dares to look within herself for the answers to these questions and for the roots of all conflict, war, and destruction. Elle magazine of France described this book as “sublime … a long, strange poem that recalls the work of such giants of literary journalism as V.S. Naipaul and Ryszard Kapuscinski.

"The descriptions of the women and their environs are bold and vivid. The words describing the pain and suffering are strangely luxurious, like coming upon an oasis in an unforgiving desert. Do not read this book if you’re pressed for time. It will demand that you take care of it, nurture it, lavish it with the attention you would give a child. Gagnon’s prose is to be savored, like fine food, not gulped like a fast-food hamburger. You will be rewarded for reading about women in a way only a woman could describe."
– Rachael Hanel, www.womenwriters.net

"Women in a World at War, by Quebec writer Madeleine Gagnon, is an extraordinary work... In uncovering the psychological roots of violence, Gagnon reveals the systemic and domestic abuse of women to be an underlying basis for the brutalities of war. And yet the book’s overall tone is hopeful, for both the women and the devastated countries where they reside. The book pays tribute to the spirit and energy of women who drive activist movements across the world." – Quill and Quire

"Women in a World at War, by Quebec writer Madeleine Gagnon, is an extraordinary work." – Quill and Quire