Reviews with content warning for Violence - La guerra no tiene rostro de mujer

Here is someone who deserved that Nobel prize. Not by writing her own thoughts but because she gave voice to others.
This book shows all the horrors of war, but it does more than that. It reflects on what it means to be female, what it means to be feminine, what gender is and how it affects people in this extreme situation. It could be read alongside Simone de Beauvoirs Le deuxième sexe and Judith Butlers Gender Trouble. The only thing it misses is any reference to queerness. I get that that is because of the context. Alexievich had trouble getting this past the censors as it is. And maybe it was something that was not even part of the conversations. In any case, this book is well worth reading.

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michipez's review against another edition

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5.0

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aliteracja's review against another edition

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serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

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4.75

The Unwomanly Face of War is an example of oral history at its finest. The author spent a decade travelling around the Soviet Union interviewing hundreds of women who contributed to the Soviet war effort, whether that be as partisans, sappers, snipers, nurses, laundresses, pilots, tank drivers, machine gunners and more. You name it and a Soviet woman probably did it. The result is a brilliant collection of their own words - some lengthy, others smaller snippets, grouped around a theme - relating the reality of their war experiences, experiences that were recognised with medals at the time but were neglected, silenced or disparaged in later years. It’s a story of women desperate to do their bit, many eager to serve on the front lines, having to make do with male uniforms and deal with scepticism from male leaders - at least at first. It’s a story full of blood, fear, horror and exhaustion, of memories that still haunted them forty years later. It’s a story that not only includes the war but also the realities of the lives of the women - of missing children left behind, of having to deal with periods without any necessary supplies, of dealing with grief when a loved one died, of missing feeling like a woman. What it isn’t is dry, boring or impersonal, charges levelled, often justly, at many official histories. It also expertly manages to capture both the commonalities of the women’s experiences as a whole and the unique nature of each individual woman’s war.

The other thing I appreciated about the volume is that the author included some of her experience creating the book - her inspiration, the reactions of women when she contacted them, her own thoughts and feelings as her work progressed, and some of the material Soviet censors rejected when the books was first published.

So glad that I finally picked this book up.

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