The Front Line Runs Through Every Woman: Women and Local Resistance in the Zimbabwean Liberation War

Citation:

O’Gorman, Eleanor. 2011. The Front Line Runs Through Every Woman: Women & Local Resistance in the Zimbabwean Liberation War. Woodbridge; Zimbabwe; Rochester, N.Y.: James Currey ; Weaver Press ; Boydell & Brewer.

Author: Eleanor O'Gorman

Abstract:

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 over-simplify 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, which is characterized here as Gendered Localised Resistance. This is examined through the prism of life in the Protected Villages in Chiweshe experienced in everyday social relations, revolutionary roles, and food security. It traces how women forged strategies of survival and resistance in the middle of guerrilla warfare pitted between the forces of the state and the revolutionary resistance movements. The book can be read as a unique and richly detailed account of the lives of women during the Zimbabwe civil war and liberation struggle; as a wider argument about how researchers can approach and incorporate lived experience into accounts of larger dynamics (war/revolution); and as a substantial and important contribution to feminist historiography and writings on women and war. (Abstract from Publisher)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, National Liberation Wars, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Livelihoods, Security, Food Security Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2011