M i c h e l e We l d o nJ A W S

S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 1

Michele Weldon JAWS September 2011

Women, War and Memoir:

The Civil War to Iraq and Beyond the Arab Spring

http://vodpod.com/watch/557669-women-war-journalists

“Her boyfriend left her.”

Reason to write memoir:

1. Juicy revelations2. Inform others as

witness3. Journal of historical

chronology4. Healing and cathartic 5. Personal

transformation

1. Train wreck 2. Learn, discover3. Fill in historical

blanks 4. Empathy for writer5. The personal

becomes universal

“The past becomes a mosaic blur of feelings and apparitions.” Rosemary Bachle, “Women’s War Memoirs” Reason to read

memoir:

http://www.niemanstoryboard.org/2011/07/28/yagoda-memoir-truth-charts-delorenzo

/

Memoir’s “truthY Obligations”

Is the war central to the story?

Susie King Taylor: a nurse to black soldiers in Civil War

• “Topsy Turvy world” emancipated, liberated Victorian Era women

• Worked outside the home for the first time• Red Cross nurses, munition workers, dispatch riders • Stories were about the absence of men, “No Man’s Land” • Emergence of lesbian and feminist literature: Gertrude

Stein • Defined by their remote reflections on war • Sexualization and freedom of women at home, later

reunited with disabled and disfigured partners• Contemporaries: Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman,

Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, May Sinclair, Virginia Woolfe, Katherine Anne Porter, Katherine Mansfield

Point and write: The WWI Narrative:

WWII: War correspondents:Oddities, pioneers

Martha Gelhorn, Dorothy Thompson, Lee Miller , Margaret Bourke White, Claire Booth Luce, Dickey Chappelle, Sigrid Schultz, Ann Stringer

A new viewpoint.

What did the women journalists bring to the stories?

Women journalists approached the stories differently, more featurized, more anecdotal, “softer,” more humanistic

Still so unusual for women to be in this role

Still a war with familiar western civilization, language but not extreme cultural barriers

Gender, language differences

Korean War, VietNam

JAWdesses Tad Bartimus, Edie Lederer: fighting newsrooms for news

Writers, photographers, videographers, radio & TVMemoirs are not just

about the work, but also encompass daily lives and what is missed at home

Is the memoir healing, sensational or voyeuristic?

Deborah Copaken Kogan

A clash of: cultures, language, religion, customs, gender suppression and violence : Women are the enemy and are in danger

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/05/lara-logan-breaks-her-silence-on-60-minutes-.html

In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya & throughout Arab spring :

• Compelling writing• Original style • Fresh outlook• New information• Personal transformation • Timeless• The author as heroine• Characters we can know, empathize with

or despise

What makes a good memoir?

Don’t tell everything, but tell enough. Be specific. Change the aperture.

In memoir, the person must feel real.

Make the reader feel as if he/she is thereCreate scenesOffer revelationsThe setting as a characterInternal dialogue without rants A solid narrative arc

Move beyond chronological regurgitation of events.

• Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War by Deborah Copaken Kogan

• Flirting with Danger: Confessions of a Reluctant War Reporter by Siobhan Darrow

• Chienne de Guerre: A Woman Reporter Behind The Lines by Anne Nivat

• The BangBang Club• Naked in Baghdad by Anne Garrels• Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in Combat Hospital by

Heidi Squier Kraft• Sister in the band of Brothers: Embedded with the 101st

Airborne in Iraq by Katherine Skiba• Ghosts by Daylight :Love, War and Redemption by Janine Di

Giovanni

A quick bibliography:

• On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in VietNam by Joyce Hoffman

• War Torn: Stories of War from Women Reporters by Tad Bartimus

• War, Women and the News by Catherine Gourley • The Women Who Wrote The War by Nancy Caldwell

Sorel • The Face of War by Martha Gelhorn • Where The Action Was: Women War Correspondents

by Penny Coleman • Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years by

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

More great war memoirs:

Stories from women in combat written BY women in combat

Now that more women war correspondents now working independently and for MSM outlets, less of an anomaly

Honest accounts of what it is like and what it means in the broader context

Move past sensationalism into what is real

What’s next:

The Real Women Soldiers reality show?