War and me A memoir

Iraqi poet Hassan (A Butterfly's Voice) revisits a lifetime defined by war in this devastating and gorgeous work. Hassan's childhood was marked by grief and casualty, a reality that grew worse in her early teens after Iran and Iraq went to war in 1980. Even with her academic achievements, Hassan struggled to celebrate her accomplishments: "What was success worth when death stole my loved ones from me, one by one?" As a schoolteacher, Hassan continued to develop her talents for writing and poetry, publishing her debut collection to national acclaim despite the misogyny of her local writing community. Though the 13-year-long economic sanctions would leave her family barely able to feed themselves, Hassan worked steadfastly to support her family before begrudgingly agreeing to an arranged marriage. As she reveals, the marriage buckled under her unsupportive husband's anger; when she received a master's degree during the United States' intervention in Iraq, Hassan writes, "My husband's sense that I had become too independent... caused him to tyrannize me even more." After he made public death threats against her, she escaped to the U.S., where she now resides and continues to write. While a sobering narrative, Hassan's intelligence and resilience combine to yield an incredibly powerful look at the ripple effects of warfare. Her poignant tale of survival is one that readers won't soon forget. (Aug.)

An Iraqi poet depicts her wrenching childhood and coming-of-age under her country's series of debilitating wars. Growing up in the small town of Najaf, Hassan was the eldest in a growing middle-class family--her father had to work two jobs as a clerk and a cook--that moved often to find better housing and educational opportunities for her and her siblings. School was her refuge, and despite the increasingly tumultuous political events in Iraq, she excelled. By 1980, however, everything changed with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran. "This year and the following ones tattooed all Iraqis with loss and death," writes Hassan. Though Hussein and his advisers boasted that it would be a quick conquest, it became an eight-year slog that destroyed the country's economy and caused the senseless deaths of countless Iraqis--all while Hussein ordered the construction of more than 100 lavish palaces. "Ordinary people," writes the author, "experienced brutal lives as they endured the scourge of abject, relentless, crushing poverty, having been deserted by their government, which had inflicted these woes upon them." In a vividly detailed narrative, the author is always candid, unafraid to express her feelings. From 1980, she writes, "I was obsessed by a feeling of revulsion--as if a large snake had swallowed me." School disruptions, food scarcity, the sudden disappearance of friends and family, air sirens, explosions, and government surveillance--all marked her formative years. Fortunately, her father supported her education, and she became an accomplished teacher and then a published poet, the first woman in her town to achieve such a feat. She reluctantly gave in to her family's wishes and married a man she did not know. The union was disastrous, and Hassan endured death threats by a virulently chauvinistic society that pursued her relentlessly into exile. Throughout, Hassan renders her harrowing experiences in an authentic, heartfelt manner, offering important testimony of personal and national courage. A beautifully wrought memoir from a pioneering Iraqi author. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.