Living With Violence: Conflict in Contemporary Cultures

n spite of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the symbolic end of the Cold War, most Americans would probably agree that we live in an "age of conflict." Every day, newspaper and television headlines tell us of new and not-so-new "wars" in faraway, unfamiliar places—Bosnia, Northern Iraq, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia. Typically, we find it difficult to understand the nature and sources of these conflicts, to say nothing of their effects on the minds and spirits of those immersed in them.

The books in this series take us into six contemporary cultures in conflict and allow us to examine them from various social, cultural, and political perspectives. Those living in these cultures may not be "at war" in any conventional sense, but they live in a continual state of siege or in its aftermath and must cope with the attendant ambiguities, uncertainties, and suspicions.

The six writers represented here are most often concerned with the impact of violence and aggression on the powerless and in societies typically characterized by political repression and murder, genocide, and terrorism. A comparison of these accounts, individually and culturally, offers us valuable insight into the nature and effects of conflict in our global community.

Sahar Khalifeh’s novel Wild Thorns (1976) captures everyday Arab life in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Usama, a young Palestinian- turned-terrorist, returns to his homeland after having worked abroad in the oilfields and is shocked to discover the changes in all aspects of life brought by the occupation. Usama’s struggle, set against that of his cousin, who has made a kind of peace with the occupation, provides a vivid picture of the polarizing effects of oppression.

Julia Alvarez’s novel, In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), is a fictionalized account of the lives and martyrdom of the Mirabal sisters, who helped form an underground movement in the Dominican Republic to overthrow the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and were eventually murdered for their part in it. Told from the varying perspectives of the four sisters, the novel conveys the growing political awareness and commitment of the Mirabals without diminishing their human sides as young women growing up. The book shows how ordinary people can become heroes, sometimes in spite of themselves, and summon up extraordinary courage in support of their beliefs.

Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (1998) is a journalistic collection of eyewitness stories derived from the author’s numerous visits to Rwanda. The book traces the origins and extent of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, vividly capturing the horrors of that period, and examines its lasting aftermath in that small African country. Gourevitch’s moving, and often painful, work raises serious questions about international responsibility in future cases of conflict and genocide and about human nature and the human condition as a whole.

In First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (2000), Loung Ung recalls her experiences as a childhood survivor of the Pol Pot regime. This is a powerful story of a family forced to flee their life of privilege and to live under the constant fear of discovery, suspicion, and death. Ung recounts her firsthand experience of genocide, starvation, and heroic sacrifice as the family struggles to survive, to reunite, and to triumph in the face of crimes against humanity.