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Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War
Nimo, Maha, Safah, Shatha, Emma, Danielle, Kim, Charlene. In a book that once again blends her distinctive flair for capturing the texture of everyday life with shrewd political insights, Cynthia Enloe looks closely at the lives of eight ordinary women, four Iraqis and four Americans, during the Iraq War. Among others, Enloe profiles a Baghdad beauty parlor owner, a teenage girl who survived a massacre, an elected member of Parliament, the young wife of an Army sergeant, and an African American woman soldier. Each chapter begins with a close-up look at one woman’s experiences and widens into a dazzling examination of the larger canvas of war’s gendered dimensions. Bringing to light hidden and unexpected theaters of operation—prostitution, sexual assault, marriage, ethnic politics, sexist economies—these stories are a brilliant entryway into an eye-opening exploration of the actual causes, costs, and long-range consequences of war. This unique comparison of American and Iraqi women’s diverse and complex experiences sheds a powerful light on the different realities that together we call, perhaps too easily, “the Iraq war.”
336 pages, Hardcover
First published May 2, 2010
6 people are currently reading
173 people want to read
About the author
Cynthia Enloe
43 books114 followersCynthia Holden Enloe is a feminist writer, theorist, and professor.
She is best known for her work on gender and militarism and for her contributions to the field of feminist international relations. She has done pioneering feminist research into international politics and political economy, and has considerable contribution to building a more inclusive feminist scholarly community.
Cynthia Enloe was born in New York, New York and grew up in Manhasset, Long Island, a New York suburb. Her father was from Missouri and went to medical school in Germany from 1933 to 1936. Her mother went to Mills College and married Cynthia's father upon graduation.
After completing her undergraduate education at Connecticut College in 1960, she went on to earn an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1967 in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkely, Enloe was the first woman ever to be a Head TA for Aaron Wildavsky, then an up-and-coming star in the field of American Politics.
Enloe states that she has been influenced by many other feminists who use an ethnographic approach, specifically, Seung-Kyung Kim’s (1997) work on South Korean women factory workers during the pro-democracy campaign and Anne Allison’s (1994) work on observing corporate businessmen’s interactions with hostesses in a Tokyo drinking club. Enloe has also listed Diane Singerman, Purnima Mankekar, and Cathy Lutz as people who have inspired and influenced her work.
She is best known for her work on gender and militarism and for her contributions to the field of feminist international relations. She has done pioneering feminist research into international politics and political economy, and has considerable contribution to building a more inclusive feminist scholarly community.
Cynthia Enloe was born in New York, New York and grew up in Manhasset, Long Island, a New York suburb. Her father was from Missouri and went to medical school in Germany from 1933 to 1936. Her mother went to Mills College and married Cynthia's father upon graduation.
After completing her undergraduate education at Connecticut College in 1960, she went on to earn an M.A. in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1967 in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkely, Enloe was the first woman ever to be a Head TA for Aaron Wildavsky, then an up-and-coming star in the field of American Politics.
Enloe states that she has been influenced by many other feminists who use an ethnographic approach, specifically, Seung-Kyung Kim’s (1997) work on South Korean women factory workers during the pro-democracy campaign and Anne Allison’s (1994) work on observing corporate businessmen’s interactions with hostesses in a Tokyo drinking club. Enloe has also listed Diane Singerman, Purnima Mankekar, and Cathy Lutz as people who have inspired and influenced her work.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 22, 2021
WOW!
I read this book through one of my courses and was really impressed at how Enloe incorporated so many different sources of information, from the quantifiable to the qualitative. It's very interdisciplinary in that sense, and I feel like it made Enloe's arguments stronger.
I did come in expecting something a lot more focused on each woman's experiences during the Iraq War, but this text uses them more as models for the myriad of roles that women can hold during conflict. It was effective at doing so, but because of that I had a hard time remembering everyone's names. Definitely something I'd like to reread at a later date!
I read this book through one of my courses and was really impressed at how Enloe incorporated so many different sources of information, from the quantifiable to the qualitative. It's very interdisciplinary in that sense, and I feel like it made Enloe's arguments stronger.
I did come in expecting something a lot more focused on each woman's experiences during the Iraq War, but this text uses them more as models for the myriad of roles that women can hold during conflict. It was effective at doing so, but because of that I had a hard time remembering everyone's names. Definitely something I'd like to reread at a later date!
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July 29, 2010THE WOMEN’S WAR
Reviewed by: Robin L. Riley
Over a long career as a scholar of international relations, Cynthia Enloe has been preoccupied with the
query Where are the women? Without asking questions about gender, she warns, we can’t get a complete picture of international politics. In Nimo’s War, Emma’s War,she uses the experiences of four Iraqi and four American women as jumping-off points to examine the price women have paid (and continue to pay) in the Iraq War. Their stories help illustrate how gendered politics change over the course of a war and how this thing we call war itself changes over time.
One of her Iraqi subjects is Safah Yunis Salem, a 13-year-old in Haditha in November 2005, when that city's name became synonymous with massacre. U.S. Marines, reacting to the death of one of their unit by a roadside bomb, entered two homes, one of them Safah's, and began shooting the civilian inhabitants. Her aunt, killed in front of her, was one of 19 who died there. Safah provides a point of view -- that of adolescent girls -- seldom considered in traditional war stories, despite it being their bodies upon which sectarian or ethnic violence in the form of sexual assaults is often enacted. They suffer from hunger, lack of access to education and post-traumatic stress disorder, yet are expected to handle the caregiving for war-injured families.
Among Enloe's American subjects is Emma Bedoy-Pina, whose hometown of San Antonio is called "Military City, USA" by city boosters. With one son already in the Air Force and another in high school, Emma is "the object of considerable Defense Department conceptualizing and strategizing": a Latina mom targeted by military recruiters. Although advertising agencies with Pentagon contracts were promising worried mothers "that their military sons and daughters would be able to stay close to home and remain part of the local Latino community," her younger son decides to attend college instead, and she supports his decision. Nevertheless, as president of the San Antonio branch of Blue Star Mothers, a group with a mission to promote patriotism, she becomes prominent as a spokesperson for the mothers of service members -- her story underlining Enloe's thesis that women's endorsement is necessary for war to occur and continue.
As in most wars, the women impacted by the Iraq War have remained largely invisible, either infantilized and disregarded or turned into symbols. Military commanders dismiss American women's accusations of rape by fellow soldiers; the wives of deployed National Guardsmen, left in desperate financial straits, turn to government food stamp programs. Meanwhile, Iraqi women provide serial images of helplessness, huddling together as American soldiers break down doors, shine strobe-strength lights and bark commands. "Time after time in press photos, we see a girl in her nightclothes, looking stunned," Enloe writes. "We hear nothing...from the girl, what she is thinking, what she later tells her friends, what she asks her mother, what she writes in her diary."
With Nimo's War, Emma's War, we begin to imagine.
Reviewed by: Robin L. Riley
Over a long career as a scholar of international relations, Cynthia Enloe has been preoccupied with the
query Where are the women? Without asking questions about gender, she warns, we can’t get a complete picture of international politics. In Nimo’s War, Emma’s War,she uses the experiences of four Iraqi and four American women as jumping-off points to examine the price women have paid (and continue to pay) in the Iraq War. Their stories help illustrate how gendered politics change over the course of a war and how this thing we call war itself changes over time.
One of her Iraqi subjects is Safah Yunis Salem, a 13-year-old in Haditha in November 2005, when that city's name became synonymous with massacre. U.S. Marines, reacting to the death of one of their unit by a roadside bomb, entered two homes, one of them Safah's, and began shooting the civilian inhabitants. Her aunt, killed in front of her, was one of 19 who died there. Safah provides a point of view -- that of adolescent girls -- seldom considered in traditional war stories, despite it being their bodies upon which sectarian or ethnic violence in the form of sexual assaults is often enacted. They suffer from hunger, lack of access to education and post-traumatic stress disorder, yet are expected to handle the caregiving for war-injured families.
Among Enloe's American subjects is Emma Bedoy-Pina, whose hometown of San Antonio is called "Military City, USA" by city boosters. With one son already in the Air Force and another in high school, Emma is "the object of considerable Defense Department conceptualizing and strategizing": a Latina mom targeted by military recruiters. Although advertising agencies with Pentagon contracts were promising worried mothers "that their military sons and daughters would be able to stay close to home and remain part of the local Latino community," her younger son decides to attend college instead, and she supports his decision. Nevertheless, as president of the San Antonio branch of Blue Star Mothers, a group with a mission to promote patriotism, she becomes prominent as a spokesperson for the mothers of service members -- her story underlining Enloe's thesis that women's endorsement is necessary for war to occur and continue.
As in most wars, the women impacted by the Iraq War have remained largely invisible, either infantilized and disregarded or turned into symbols. Military commanders dismiss American women's accusations of rape by fellow soldiers; the wives of deployed National Guardsmen, left in desperate financial straits, turn to government food stamp programs. Meanwhile, Iraqi women provide serial images of helplessness, huddling together as American soldiers break down doors, shine strobe-strength lights and bark commands. "Time after time in press photos, we see a girl in her nightclothes, looking stunned," Enloe writes. "We hear nothing...from the girl, what she is thinking, what she later tells her friends, what she asks her mother, what she writes in her diary."
With Nimo's War, Emma's War, we begin to imagine.
November 7, 2024
Read for Women and War in the Middle East, but wow- it was very thought provoking and such an important read for thinking about gendered war and gendered military.
December 25, 2013
Compelling read.
Compelling stories, great insight into into the plight of women affected by the Iraqi war. However, I wonder how if women Enloe wrote about approve of the way their stories were told considering Enloe never spoke with any of them directly.
Compelling stories, great insight into into the plight of women affected by the Iraqi war. However, I wonder how if women Enloe wrote about approve of the way their stories were told considering Enloe never spoke with any of them directly.
September 6, 2010
Good to be reminded of how women experience this war since mainstream press does not usually focus on that.
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October 13, 2013Disappointing content
July 5, 2016
Troubling insights on both sides of the conflict, from the perspective of women involved and impacted.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews