Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War

Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War brings together ten years of writing published on Warscapes magazine through the lens of gender and advances a new paradigm of war writing. War is always, ultimately, fought upon the backs of women, often under the pretense of saving them. Yet, along the way, the brutalities unleashed on women during wartime remain relentless. In this collection, insurgency emerges in the raw and meticulous language of witnessing, and in the desire to render the space of conflict in radically different ways.

There are no paeans to courageous soldiers here, nor pat nationalist rhetoric, nor bravado about saving lives. These perspectives on war come out of regions and positions that defy stereotypical war reportage or the expected war story. They disobey the rules of war writing and do not subordinate themselves to the usual themes and tropes that we have become so used to reading. Instead, Insurgent Feminisms advances a new paradigm of war writing.

These perspectives on war come out of regions and positions that defy stereotypical war reportage or the expected war story. Insurgent Feminisms comprises reportage, fiction, memoir, poetry and conversations from over sixty writers and includes contributions by Nathalie, Handal, Anne Nivat, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Suchitra Vijayan, Chika Unigwe, Bélen Fernández, Uzma Falak, Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek, Gaiutra Bahadur, Robtel Neajai Pailey, Sumana Roy and Lina Mounzer, among several others.

Bhakti Shringarpure co-founded Warscapes magazine in November 2011 and it has now transitioned into the Radical Books Collective.

Veruska Cantelli is a writer, translator and editor who teaches interdisciplinary studies at Champlain College in Vermont, USA.

Insurgent Feminisms is refreshingly bold and emotive, pulling at the heartstrings —and a rich literary delight to boot. As you turn the pages, you will be enlight­ened, awed, triggered, outraged, guilt-tripped… Diverse women from the global South gift us the rare privilege to glimpse into the incredibly minute details of their experiences of literal and metaphorical wars; they break exciting new ground in knowledge production. The book jolts you out of the narrow focus of your existence and reminds you of the amazing power of women’s resilience.

What a gem!
— Sylvia Tamale, Decolonial feminist scholar, Uganda

Crimes against humanity, war crimes and their justification through imperial-racist civic and state action are not as distant as we would like to believe. Resistance, hope, and the tenacious will to return, too, survive in the most unimaginable ways. Insurgent Feminisms drives this point home in searing, poignant re-tellings from across the world.

— Kalpana Kannabiran, Author, sociologist and legal scholar, India