{"id":133774,"date":"2019-02-19T14:10:14","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T19:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=133774"},"modified":"2019-02-20T14:18:32","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T19:18:32","slug":"when-women-write-about-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/","title":{"rendered":"A Quaker Woman Writes about War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

World War 2 propaganda poster, Treidler, c. 1943<\/p><\/div>\n

What complicated times we live in: so many thorny issues need to be acknowledged before we can responsibly or sensitively begin a discussion. As Roxana Robinson\u2014a Quaker who opposes war\u2014told her audience in her 2014 address, \u201cThe Warrior and the Writer,\u201d at the United States Air Force Academy shortly after the publication of her deeply researched and compassionately imagined novel Sparta<\/em>, \u201cYou might be surprised that I wrote a book about a twenty-six year old Marine: I\u2019m the wrong gender, the wrong generation, and the wrong religious genre.\u201d Although she avoided the term \u201ccultural appropriation,\u201d it\u2019s clear both from this address and from her other essays that she\u2019s seriously grappled with this problem: the potential violence those of us with the resources to have our voices heard can do to those with less access to telling stories. Writer and activist Nikesh Shukla instructs that anyone \u201cwriting \u2018the other\u2019 \u201d should both do the research properly and \u201cask yourself: why am I telling this story?\u201d In this regard, Robinson is a model citizen, but she never wavers in her conviction that it is the job of writers to be curious about and then \u201crender precisely what it means to be alive.\u201d We would not have Anna Karenina<\/em>, Robinson writes, had Tolstoy not imagined the experience of a jilted young woman; we would not have Shakespeare\u2019s plays had he not put himself in the shoes of kings and servants alike. \u201cEmpathy is the opposite of exploitation,\u201d she says\u2014and it\u2019s with this belief that she approaches Sparta<\/em>\u2019s protagonist, Conrad.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And how prescient Sparta<\/em>, written at the beginning of this decade and set between 2001 and 2006, is about our complicated times. Even those of us who once shared the views of Conrad\u2019s therapist mother, Lydia \u2014 \u201cwar as unacceptable, the military as unreliable\u201d \u2014 may have been surprised to find ourselves regarding the Generals in Trump\u2019s White House as the trustworthy adults in the room. Early in the novel, Lydia, having grown up \u201cin the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when the military was shadowed with disgrace,\u201d struggles to understand why her good, sweet son, a classics major at Williams College, has decided to become an officer in the Marines. \u201cI want to do something serious, something that will make a difference,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

The language he used reminded Lydia of ancient myths, Nordic sagas, King Arthur. Courage and loyalty, Conrad said. Commitment, a code of honor. All straight from the ancient world\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sparta<\/em> is about the psychological pain of a young man who believes he has failed to uphold that ancient code of honor. In officer training, Conrad is taught the six steps of leadership: \u201cBegin planning. Arrange for Reconnaissance. Make Reconnaissance. Complete the plan. Issue the order. Supervise.\u201d It boils down to being decisive and taking responsibility for those under his command. Conrad returns from Iraq physically sound, while some of his men have returned in body bags, and it all breaks down. The gasp of a truck\u2019s brakes sounds to him like a gunshot. He ducks, \u201cscalded by fear,\u201d and then by humiliation as others look at him askance. He cannot tolerate having his back to a plate glass window, and he risks causing an accident because he\u2019s convinced that the driver in an adjacent car is holding an electronic device to set off an explosive. He cannot sleep, and if he does, it\u2019s only to wake screaming and in a cold sweat. He cannot concentrate. He cannot make love to his girlfriend.<\/p>\n

Reading Sparta<\/em>, I found myself thinking about excerpts from Douglas Brinkley\u2019s Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam<\/em> War<\/em>, which\u00a0I\u2019d read many years ago in The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>. Brinkley quotes liberally from the letters Kerry, then also an enlisted officer, sent to his parents and fianc\u00e9 as he began to question the moral clarity (a term whose political history Frank Guan dissected in a recent essay in The New York Times Magazine<\/a><\/em>) undergirding his actions: the killing of civilians he witnessed and, in some cases, was complicit in, or the deaths of men under his watch. Although Kerry\u2019s current wife, Teresa Heinz, and his sister, Peggy Kerry, have both alluded to his symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder\u2014nightmares, falling out of bed\u2014Kerry has not spoken publicly about what he has apparently endured in the years since his return from Vietnam. Similarly, Robinson\u2019s Conrad is reluctant to speak about how weak and out of control he feels now that he\u2019s back home in a place that no longer feels like home. As in the Kerry letters, Conrad is crippled by shame at his responsibility for the deaths \u201cin-country\u201d of both the men in his platoon and the Iraqi civilians whose lives they were there to protect. Psychologist Joseph Burgo, in his recent book, Shame<\/em>, outlines the common defense mechanisms against this excruciating emotion, including projection onto other, which finds its expression in contempt. Conrad, talking with his brother, directs his contempt only at himself:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have no idea,\u201d Conrad said, his voice dull. \u201cIt\u2019s like I\u2019m a secret criminal. No one here knows what I\u2019ve done…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized. As Emily Temple notes, Margaret Mitchell\u2019s Gone with the Wind<\/em>, Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> (with the tragic character of Septimus Smith), and Jayne Anne Phillips\u2019 Machine Dreams<\/em> should rightfully be included in any list of novels about war\u2014as should many of the more recent entries in Soniah Kamal\u2019s \u201cFifty Novels by Women Writers on Conflict, Displacement and Resilience<\/a>,\u201d including Helen Benedict\u2019s Sand Queen<\/em>, Edwidge Danticat\u2019s The Dew Breaker<\/em>, Masha Hamilton\u2019s What Changes Everything<\/em>,\u00a0Ann Patchett\u2019s Bel Canto<\/em>, and Tatjana Soli\u2019s The Lotus Eaters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Sparta<\/em>, the character of Conrad is conveyed in close third person with such texture and depth that readers may be well into its pages before they realize that his creator is a woman. It\u2019s striking to me that the other most powerful novel I\u2019ve read about the psychological impact of war on those who serve, Pat Barker\u2019s Regeneration<\/em>, was also written by a woman. Both Barker and Robinson illuminate corners of soldiers\u2019 psyches usually kept in the shadows. I wonder if these female writers have been able to depict the shame and symptoms of their male characters because, as women, they are not themselves as much under the sway of warrior myths, and therefore not as susceptible to feeling humiliated by a failure to abide by those ancient ideals. In other words, Barker and Robinson have perhaps inhabited their characters without fully identifying with them and, in so doing, seen them more clearly. It\u2019s a concept that psychoanalysts and therapists understand. The distance between the observing and empathizing functions is key to the therapeutic encounter: an analyst\u2019s identification with a patient can cloud their perception of that which is unique in a person and the darker underbelly we all share\u2014the ubiquitous aggressive impulses, the \u201csecondary gain\u201d from suffering.<\/p>\n

In Regeneration<\/em>, which opens in 1917, we see what were then called \u201cshell-shocked\u201d young officers returned from the French front lines through the eyes of the psychiatrist William Rivers (a fictionalized version of the anthropologist and neurologist Dr. W. H. R. Rivers), who treats them at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. In her acknowledgments for the novel, Barker cites Elaine Showalater\u2019s The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980<\/em>, from which the fictionalized Rivers\u2019s theories about the origins of war neurosis seem in part to derive. Whereas men go to war, Rivers reflects, armed with their boyish fantasies, what they experience in the trenches is, in fact, profound helplessness:<\/p>\n

They\u2019d been mobilized<\/em> into holes in the ground so constricted they could hardly move. And the Great Adventure\u2014the real life equivalent of all the adventure stories they\u2019d devoured as boys\u2014consisted of crouching in a dugout, waiting to be killed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is this profound helplessness, Rivers concludes, not instances of trauma, that leads to the men\u2019s symptoms, and is why \u201cthis apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whereas Robinson\u2019s book is not as overtly feminist as Barker\u2019s, one of its delights is seeing women through a male point of view created by a woman. Witness Conrad observing the women jogging with him around the Central Park Reservoir:<\/p>\n

Girls always looked great, that was the thing. They always looked great, with their supple bodies and their flying hair \u2026 They ignored you absolutely as you passed them or they passed you, headsets on, some private music or audiobook driving secretly into their brains, not giving you the time of day, but giving you amazingly, complete privileges for looking at their entire bodies, top to bottom\u2014tight rounded asses; flat mounds of breasts; long, clean legs and pumping arms; smooth, supple backs. They jazzed up the whole world just by running around the reservoir in those tight stretchy things, not looking at you, their expressions concentrated, their faces and necks slick with sweat, their arms and legs moving fast, their feet pounding on the soft track.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, Robinson knows that women don\u2019t always look great, most especially to ourselves when we\u2019re sweating on a track, but she shows us what Conrad finds wondrous (\u201cthey jazzed up the whole world\u201d) and foreign (\u201cthose tight stretchy things\u201d) and intimidating (\u201csome private music or audiobook driving secretly into their brains\u201d) with the accuracy of a native able to see the idealization and ignorance and fantasies of a tourist: in this case, a twenty-first-century man with a professional mother, an accomplished, independent sister, and a girlfriend who nonetheless still thinks about sex two or three times a minute, the hum of eroticism always in his mind.<\/p>\n

There is another crucial difference between Regeneration<\/em> and Sparta.<\/em> Regeneration<\/em> is about the care and help the young officers receive from the compassionate and dedicated psychiatrist, William Rivers. For each of his patients\u2014Burns, unable to eat since he\u2019d woken with his mouth and nose filled with \u201cdecomposing human flesh\u201d; Anderson, a doctor who\u2019d developed a blood phobia after watching a patient bleed to death; Prior, who\u2019d arrived mute\u2014Rivers attempts to recover their stories and alleviate their pain. By contrast, Conrad, once he accepts that he does in fact need help, receives none. After white-knuckling it during the four-month waiting period for an appointment at the V.A. Hospital, he\u2019s seen by a doctor who\u2019s not read Conrad\u2019s chart, takes phone calls during their brief meeting, and then offers nothing more than \u201cCombat incidents can be very troubling.\u201d He prescribes medications which, Conrad later reads on the internet, may increase his suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n

What the fuck? He felt everything draining away.<\/p>\n

Nothing he had hoped for was going to happen. Nothing about him had been recognized. He was invisible again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The shame only reverberates.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the heart of it,\u201d Robinson told the Air Force cadets in 2014, \u201cliterature is a delivery system. I\u2019d argue that it\u2019s the most beautiful and powerful delivery system that has ever been devised \u2026 It\u2019s through literature that we can come to understand ideas and how they work in peoples\u2019 lives.\u201d Although she says that the idea that spurred her novel came from a newspaper account of how soldiers were dying in Iraq in part because they had been put in harm\u2019s way in unarmed Humvees, the idea that she most powerfully depicts in Sparta<\/em> concerns the profound immorality of abandoning returning soldiers by not providing them with sufficient help to recover from their psychological wounds. \u201cHere is the sad story,\u201d John Kerry said in a recent speech:<\/p>\n

You go down and see that remarkable memorial in Washington, the granite with the etched names of the 58,600-plus who died in Vietnam, there are more names than those on that wall of those who took their own lives, or lost their lives to addiction or to just depression, loss. There are more people who died here in America afterwards, who were veterans of the war, than are on that wall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the heartbreaking last line of her novel\u2014\u201cSparta made young boys into warriors; it was left to the warriors to restore themselves to men.\u201d\u2014Robinson \u00a0reminds us that it is sadly not a new story.<\/p>\n

The cadets, though, to whom Robinson spoke were gifted inspiration rather than despair: Quakers, she said, believe that \u201cevery human being contains an inner light, a kind of spiritual radiance \u2026 If you look another person in the eyes, you can see his living soul.\u201d Reading great literature, she explained, is an exercise in learning to see: a lesson plan for developing \u201cradical empathy\u201d and identifying the \u201cemotional truth.\u201d It is a writer\u2019s job to reveal that inner light, that radiance\u2014so essential to warriors, who hold others\u2019 lives in their hands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lisa Gornick is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Louisa Meets Bear,<\/em> Tinderbox,\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>A Private Sorcery.\u00a0Her most recent novel,\u00a0<\/em>The Peacock Feast<\/a>, was recently published by\u00a0Sarah Crichton Books.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1695,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Quaker Woman Writes about War by Lisa Gornick<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Quaker Woman Writes about War by Lisa Gornick\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 19, 2019 \u2013 The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-02-19T19:10:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-02-20T19:18:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"722\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lisa Gornick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lisa Gornick\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lisa Gornick\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/550fb4cda24d8afef036ad8e7a19c62f\"},\"headline\":\"A Quaker Woman Writes about War\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-02-19T19:10:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-02-20T19:18:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/\"},\"wordCount\":2232,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/\",\"name\":\"A Quaker Woman Writes about War by Lisa Gornick\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-02-19T19:10:14+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-02-20T19:18:32+00:00\",\"description\":\"The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A Quaker Woman Writes about War\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/550fb4cda24d8afef036ad8e7a19c62f\",\"name\":\"Lisa Gornick\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/403c00369c9e7401dafa176efb4b9e25e605c76126013fda7eb8d262c12157b9?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/403c00369c9e7401dafa176efb4b9e25e605c76126013fda7eb8d262c12157b9?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Lisa Gornick\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lgornick\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Quaker Woman Writes about War by Lisa Gornick","description":"The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Quaker Woman Writes about War by Lisa Gornick","og_description":"February 19, 2019 \u2013 The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2019-02-19T19:10:14+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-02-20T19:18:32+00:00","og_image":[{"width":700,"height":722,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Lisa Gornick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Lisa Gornick","Est. reading time":"11 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/"},"author":{"name":"Lisa Gornick","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/550fb4cda24d8afef036ad8e7a19c62f"},"headline":"A Quaker Woman Writes about War","datePublished":"2019-02-19T19:10:14+00:00","dateModified":"2019-02-20T19:18:32+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/"},"wordCount":2232,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg","articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/","name":"A Quaker Woman Writes about War by Lisa Gornick","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg","datePublished":"2019-02-19T19:10:14+00:00","dateModified":"2019-02-20T19:18:32+00:00","description":"The canon of war fiction written by women has only recently been adequately recognized.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/warwomen.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/19\/when-women-write-about-war\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Quaker Woman Writes about War"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/550fb4cda24d8afef036ad8e7a19c62f","name":"Lisa Gornick","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/403c00369c9e7401dafa176efb4b9e25e605c76126013fda7eb8d262c12157b9?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/403c00369c9e7401dafa176efb4b9e25e605c76126013fda7eb8d262c12157b9?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Lisa Gornick"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/lgornick\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1695"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133774"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133824,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133774\/revisions\/133824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}