Revolution within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962

Envisioning Cuba

by Michelle Chase

A handful of celebrated photographs show armed, fatigues-clad female Cuban insurgents alongside their companeros in Cuba's remote mountains during the revolutionary struggle. However, the story of women's part in the struggle's success only now receives comprehensive consideration in Michelle Chase's history of women and gender politics in revolutionary Cuba. Restoring to history women's participation in the all-important urban insurrection, and resisting Fidel Castro's triumphant claim that women's emancipation was handed to them as a "revolution within the revolution," Chase's work demonstrates that women's activism and leadership was critical at every stage of the revolutionary process.

Tracing changes in political attitudes alongside evolving gender ideologies in the years leading up to the revolution, Chase describes how insurrectionists mobilized familiar gendered notions, such as masculine honor and maternal sacrifice, in ways that strengthened the coalition against Fulgencio Batista. But, after 1959, the mobilization of women and the societal transformations that brought more women and young people into the political process opened the revolutionary platform to increasingly urgent demands for women's rights. In many cases, Chase shows, the revolutionary government was simply formalizing popular initiatives already in motion on the ground thanks to women with a more radical vision of their rights.

Genres: Feminism, History, Academic, Nonfiction, Politics

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2015

Reviews

[Julian Pritchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched, detailed examination of women in the Cuban Revolution and the decade leading up to it, showing the different ways that women in Cuba mobilized for or against the CR. The ways that gender shaped these mobilizations stands in contrast to the image of the small band of heroic male guerrillas who defeated Batista's dictatorship.

[lupe · Rating 4 out of 5]

super interesting i wish i hadn't been blinded by panic bc of deadlines bc i would've enjoyed it more

[Greta Krueger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating! One of my current favorite books on Cuban history.

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my EE.