The Front Line Runs through Every Woman

Women and Local Resistance in the Zimbabwean Liberation War

Eleanor O'Gorman

 

Book not available in Zimbabwe.

Synopsis

A Zimbabwe-specific study, focusing on the lives of women in a small locale (Chiweshe) during the anti-colonial insurgency, this book is also a challenge to established and still current modes of thought and research orientations which oversimplify the complex realities women face in the full range of violent conflicts, both past and present. By contextualizing the voices of women of Chiweshe, not only is an important and under-developed aspect of Zimbabwean and African history revealed, but a new approach to comprehending the highly-tensioned lives of women in war is presented.

Review

(This) richly detailed study helps to refocus how we understand the role of women in war; liberating our understanding from a binary model or victim/agent that has dominated the literature for far too long. - Lucas Bulletin

Author

Eleanor O' Gorman is Senior Associate at the Gender Studies Centre and a Research Associate at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.