How insightful Dr Enloe is! I appreciated her honesty and sincere interest in our class. I had a very interesting discussion with her about the parents of the brothers involved with the Boston massacre. I was concerned that the interviews I had read with the parents portrayed them as parents that were dumbfounded by the event and simply could not understand or conceive that their children would commit such an atrocity. I never really thought about not wanting to display your children in a negative light, especially when the whole world has its attention on you, your family, and your parenting...which now seems obvious enough...but I digress...
I thought that Nimos War, Emmas War was an interesting book. It still is odd to me that she never met them because the text reads as though they were familiar. I remember reading the introduction and that sticking out to me as I read the book. I think this presents an interesting dilemma through doing research and writing with secondary sources. This presents the issues so much more clearly than any research I've written! Regardless I thought it was a great way to present and frame the many issues facing women on both sides of the Iraq war. I also really liked that she included the experiences of a young girl. As I said in class, she was born the same year as my younger sister and her story and bravery really hit home for me.
As far as the title! Wow I over thought that. I thought it was because Emma and Nimo were stories about things highly trivialized during war and peace, motherhood and femininity. For example Enloe (2010) shares "Just because on this day in May 2003 she was in a beauty parlor didn't mean that she hadn't been thinking seriously about politics" (p. 20). The truth is that most people would not have honestly considered that a beauty parlor would be the place to go to find out so much about the perspective of women on the politics of the Iraq war. Turns out it is the perfect place... As far as Emma's side of the story, it marks not only the triviality of motherhood in military recruitment but also the places that this recruitment is taking place: "Though markedly different in important ways, in the United States as in Iraq, schools were becoming the sites for war waging in the early twenty-first century" (Enloe, 2010, p. 134). There is something especially sinister about recruiting children while in school, a place of education and supposedly enlightenment, a place where parents trust their children to be safe...to be taught alternatives to violence.
However, I was incorrect in my far reaching assumption. Regardless it served as a lesson in naming a book and the various challenges that it presents to your editors, publishers, and potential readers.
One more thing, I was really glad that in her presentation she did not mention the religion of the boys. She made it very apparent that in today's time we are finding more and more things to label as terrorism and finding more and more excuses to become more militarized. I did not realize that every police department has a SWAT team!
Funny/Sad story: on my birthday my best friend of eleven years called me on my birthday to wish me a happy birthday and to let me know that the LA SWAT team showed up at her new house while she was in the shower. She open the front door to a ton of rifles pointed at her in her towel with her five year old daughter next to her. We laughed about it, but it was a disturbing thought. Apparently before she moved in some gang member lived there and they were looking for him...maybe they should have spent more on researching his new location rather than terrorizing my friend and her daughter with militarized tax dollars?
Reference
Enlow, C.H. (2010). Nimo's war, Emma's war: making feminist sense of the Iraq war. Berkeley, California. University of California Press.
I thought that Nimos War, Emmas War was an interesting book. It still is odd to me that she never met them because the text reads as though they were familiar. I remember reading the introduction and that sticking out to me as I read the book. I think this presents an interesting dilemma through doing research and writing with secondary sources. This presents the issues so much more clearly than any research I've written! Regardless I thought it was a great way to present and frame the many issues facing women on both sides of the Iraq war. I also really liked that she included the experiences of a young girl. As I said in class, she was born the same year as my younger sister and her story and bravery really hit home for me.
As far as the title! Wow I over thought that. I thought it was because Emma and Nimo were stories about things highly trivialized during war and peace, motherhood and femininity. For example Enloe (2010) shares "Just because on this day in May 2003 she was in a beauty parlor didn't mean that she hadn't been thinking seriously about politics" (p. 20). The truth is that most people would not have honestly considered that a beauty parlor would be the place to go to find out so much about the perspective of women on the politics of the Iraq war. Turns out it is the perfect place... As far as Emma's side of the story, it marks not only the triviality of motherhood in military recruitment but also the places that this recruitment is taking place: "Though markedly different in important ways, in the United States as in Iraq, schools were becoming the sites for war waging in the early twenty-first century" (Enloe, 2010, p. 134). There is something especially sinister about recruiting children while in school, a place of education and supposedly enlightenment, a place where parents trust their children to be safe...to be taught alternatives to violence.
However, I was incorrect in my far reaching assumption. Regardless it served as a lesson in naming a book and the various challenges that it presents to your editors, publishers, and potential readers.
One more thing, I was really glad that in her presentation she did not mention the religion of the boys. She made it very apparent that in today's time we are finding more and more things to label as terrorism and finding more and more excuses to become more militarized. I did not realize that every police department has a SWAT team!
Funny/Sad story: on my birthday my best friend of eleven years called me on my birthday to wish me a happy birthday and to let me know that the LA SWAT team showed up at her new house while she was in the shower. She open the front door to a ton of rifles pointed at her in her towel with her five year old daughter next to her. We laughed about it, but it was a disturbing thought. Apparently before she moved in some gang member lived there and they were looking for him...maybe they should have spent more on researching his new location rather than terrorizing my friend and her daughter with militarized tax dollars?
Reference
Enlow, C.H. (2010). Nimo's war, Emma's war: making feminist sense of the Iraq war. Berkeley, California. University of California Press.
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