{"id":481,"date":"2016-06-14T09:53:32","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T09:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/?p=481"},"modified":"2018-05-01T19:05:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T19:05:57","slug":"contemporary-women-in-fiction-writing-about-war-and-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary women in fiction writing about war and conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-liberty-leading-the-people-1830\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although women have always written about conflict the majority of war writing, from ancient times until today, is by men. This is perhaps not surprising as few women have experienced combat but now, in an era when female combatants exist in greater numbers than ever before and when the number of female journalists across the world is rising, there\u2019s still not a substantial canon of literature written by women about war.<\/p>\n

As the number of female war reporters rises, the number of those writing books about their experiences has increased – women like Lindsey Hilsum on Libya, Janine di Giovanni on Syria and Kate Adie’s memoir about her life as a war reporterto name a few \u2013 but these are all non-fiction accounts. Non-fiction books about war by women who are not war reporters also exist \u2013examples include Samar Yazbek\u2019s two books on the war in Syria and Svetlana Alexievitch\u2019s book about World War 11 \u2013 but most of the fiction lists contain men\u2019s names \u2013Tim O\u2019Brien, Sebastian Faulks, Kurt Vonnegut, Khaled Husseini, etcetera.<\/p>\n

Is the problem our definition of \u2018war writing?\u2019 When we extend how we define writing about war, the field does become larger. Most of women\u2019s fiction writing on war is less direct – it is rarely about combat and more often on the consequences of war \u2013 dislocation, refugees, and families. And it\u2019s necessary to use a wider definition because war isn\u2019t only about combat. Civilians directly experience war through bombing, dislocation and loss of family members, while women are more likely to experience rape.<\/p>\n

Yet of the women who\u2019ve directly experienced combat, very few have fictionalised their experiences. One example is Michelle Wilmot who served in Iraq from 1998-2006. Her novel, \u2018Quixote in Ramadi: An Indigenous Account of Imperialism<\/em>,\u2019 is a dark but humorous book which deals with issues of neo-colonialism, homicide, genocide, and ethnic persecution. It tells the story of an indigenous female soldier in the US Army who is deployed to Iraq at the height of the tension of the Fallujah massacre and the Abu Ghraib scandal. However this book is an exception. Why then are so few women writing of their combat experiences and turning this into fiction? Is it because women feel more comfortable writing about war from a different perspective? Are women afraid to speak out? These are not questions I can readily answer.<\/p>\n

Writers \u2013 irrespective of gender \u2013 do not have to experience war to write about the subject. Katey Shultz\u2019s short stories, \u2018Flashes of War<\/em>\u2019 are about the effects of the War on Terror on both soldiers and civilians. Cara Hoffman\u2019s novel, \u2018Be Safe I Love You<\/em>\u2019 explores what happens to a woman after returning from combat duty in Iraq. Helen Benedict\u2019s \u2018Sand Queen<\/em>\u2019, was described by The Boston Globe as \u201c\u2019The Things They Carried\u2019 for women in Iraq”. The material for \u2018Sand Queen<\/em>\u2019 came from Benedict’s research for her 2009 nonfiction book, \u2018The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women in Iraq<\/em>.\u2019 Roxana Robinson\u2019s \u2018Sparta<\/em>\u2019 tells the story of soldier Conrad\u2019s first year home, interspersed with flashbacks to his time in Iraq.<\/p>\n

American women writing about recent \u2018foreign wars\u2019 is, as evidenced above and in the link below this article, greater than one might suppose at first glance. However war writing still continues to be constructed as the domain of men \u2013 Michele Robert\u2019s book \u2018Ignorance<\/em>\u2019 about two sisters under occupation in France was described, when reviewed, as a book about women rather than war though Pat Barker\u2019s \u2018Regeneration<\/em>\u2019 series, set in the First World War, does feature in lists of war writers. When it comes to British authors today, few currently tackle the subject of war. There are a couple of novels about the Troubles in Ireland, (Edna O\u2019Brien\u2019s \u2018The House of Splendid Isolation<\/em>\u2019 is one, another is Kate O\u2019Riordan\u2019s \u2018Involved<\/em>\u2019) and there\u2019s Alison Layland\u2019s novel \u2018Someone Else\u2019s Conflict<\/em>, which deals with the brutality of the Balkans War and my own novel, \u2018A Bird in the House<\/em>\u2019 set partly in Libya during the fall of Gaddafi, but generally we have to travel further afield to find women writing about war \u2013 to Pakistan, Iraq, Africa and Asia.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Burnt Shadows<\/em>\u2019 Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie writes about the shared histories of two families from the final days of the second world war in Japan, and India on the brink of partition in 1947, to Pakistan in the early 1980s, New York in the aftermath of 11 September and Afghanistan in the wake of the ensuing US bombing campaign. Maaza Mengiste\u2019s book \u2018Beneath the Lions<\/em>\u2019 Gaze\u2019 is set during the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 and Nayomi Munaweera writes about the Sri Lankan civil war in her book \u2018Island of a Thousand Mirrors<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

On the Balkans war we have \u2018S: A Novel about the Balkans<\/em>\u2019 by journalist Slavena Drakulic \u2013 the story of a Bosnian woman in exile who has just given birth to an unwanted child after being repeatedly raped by Serbian soldiers in the “women’s room” of a prison camp and there is Sara Novic\u2019s \u2018Girl at War<\/em>\u2019 – the story of a ten-year old girl in the conflict – but there are not many novels written by women about the Balkans conflict (although some books do remain untranslated, such as \u2018Hotel Zagorje<\/em>\u2019 by Ivana Bodro\u017ei\u0107).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps too early for many novels to have been published about the current refugee crisis although there are novels about refugees from Afghanistan \u2013 like Caroline Brothers\u2019 novel \u2018Hinterland<\/em>\u2019 about two boys escaping the war in Afghanistan and \u2018Under the Persimmon Tree<\/em>\u2019 by Suzanne Fisher-Staples while Hawra al-Nadani\u2019s \u2018Under the Copenhagen Sky<\/em>\u2019 explores issues of dislocation and foreignness. Certainly on the topic of refugees, men and women writers appear to be more evenly represented.<\/p>\n

Where you can find the most women writing about war and its effects is in the Middle East. This is perhaps not surprising given the recent history of this part of the world. Lebanon\u2019s 15 year civil war (1975-1990) has produced Hoda Barakat\u2019s \u2018Stones of Laughter<\/em>,\u2019 Syria, Rasha Abbas\u2019 The Gist of It <\/em>(short stories), Palestine, \u2018Mornings in Jenin<\/em>\u2019 by Susan Abulhawa, Iraq, Duna Ghalil (Orbits of Loneliness<\/em>) – among others. However, with perhaps the exception of a short story by US-based Iraqi author Faheeha Hassan whose story \u2018Mass Grave<\/em>,\u2019 is told from the point of view of a male soldier, these novels explore the effects of war rather than combat.<\/p>\n

If I were to include poetry, short stories, flash fiction and blogs the list would widen but there\u2019s not scope for that here.<\/p>\n

To conclude \u2013 the more you dig, the more you find that there ARE women writing fiction about war across the world, especially if the definition of what \u2018war\u2019 means is extended. Nonetheless I would say that there appears to be more of a silence from British, European and American women writers.<\/p>\n

For a list of other women who have written about war and conflict go to:
\nhttp:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/soniah-kamal\/women-write-war_b_5662555.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although women have always written about conflict the majority of war writing, from ancient times until today, is by men. This is perhaps not surprising as few women have experienced combat but now, in an era when female combatants exist in greater numbers than ever before and when the number of female journalists across the … Continue reading Contemporary women in fiction writing about war and conflict<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":737,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}