Terror, Counter-Terror Women Speak Out by Ammu Joseph and Kalpana Sharma, eds. (London and New York: Zed Books, 2003. 283 pages.)

Abstract

Terror, Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out presents articles by several
women writers and women’s organizations. The book analyzes and interrogates
the madness of male-dominated war and violence, and presents
women’s perspectives on war and the 9/11 tragedy. Contributors include
feminist writers, authors, academics, and journalists; mothers, women of
color, Muslim women; and women who have had first-hand experience
with war and its effects. The editors provide an excellent critical reappraisal of the ideas, concepts,
and language that underpin the multilayered world of war, power, and
peace. The book also explores diverse women’s perspectives on the failure of
war to bring about peace. In giving their perspective, the authors respond eloquently
and defiantly to war’s destructive nature. This collection, a wonderful
anthology of women’s experiences of war, allows the reader to capture the
suffering of war as well as its paradoxes, double standards, and contradictions.
The essays are organized into seven sections: “Personal and Political,”
“The War on Terror,” “Saying No,” “Motherland/ Fatherland,” “The War on
Women,” “Displaced and Dispossessed,” and “Women against War.”
The book highlights the wars in Afghanistan and Israel and the 9/11
tragedy. The authors lament that war has never really brought peace, but
rather turmoil and human and economic suffering. Most people in the
West see sanitized images of war that are carefully selected for them.
Women Speak Out tells the story of how loosing one’s children, home, and
livelihood are part of war’s true horrors ...