Category Archives: Reads

“Be Safe I Love You” Highlights Struggle of Female Vet Returning Home

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In our most revered war literature, female soldiers are often nowhere to be found. A new novel tells a war story from a female perspective.

“Be Safe I Love You” by Cara Hoffman examines a topic still largely untouched in fiction– the struggles female soldiers face upon returning home from war. The story follows Lauren Clay, an Iraq war veteran who returns to her home in upstate New York haunted by her experience in the U.S. military. It’s an important new take on traditional, male dominated war literature.

 

You can read a review of “Be Safe I Love You” in the New York Times Sunday Book Review this weekend.

War’s (Gender-Skewed?) Psychological Burden

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A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll reveals that female veterans suffer from psychological and physical damage of war in higher numbers. (Photo: Washington Post)

A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll reveals that female veterans suffer from psychological and physical damage of war in higher numbers. (Photo: Washington Post)

Female veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from psychological distress and strained relationships in higher numbers than their male counterparts, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

What’s weighing on them?

For one thing, sexual assault continues to plague the military. About a quarter of  women veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan reported a sexual assault, according to a study by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Family issues are another major source of stress.

Fifty-six percent of female service members say they have often or sometimes experienced relationship problems with their spouse as a result of their military service, while 44 percent of male service members say the same.

Read more results from the Post-Kaiser poll in The Washington Post.

Times Op-Ed: Where are Female Vets in our Art and Literature?

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A New York Times op-ed highlights the absence of female characters from our war novels, movies and art.

A New York Times op-ed highlights the absence of female characters from our war novels, movies and art.

This New York Times op-ed highlights a problem with the vast majority of our war narratives: women are nowhere to be found in them.

The most prized novels, movies and art we have dealing with war are dominated by men. Cara Hoffman, author of Be Safe I Love You, reminds us in this op-ed that women have been serving in the military in some capacity for over 400 years and have never received the same recognition men have for their service. Today, with more women than ever on the front lines of the U.S. military, they continue to struggle for equal recognition. Women are fighting the same wars men are. Returning home, they continue to battle the same physical and psychological  effects of war that men do.

So where are these women in our war novels and films?

Take a look at Hoffman’s op-ed: The Things She Carried.