Selected titles:

"Hear My Testimony," by María Teresa Tula
"Women Writing Resistance," by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez
"War Talk," by Arundhati Roy
"Fortress America," by William Greider
"Spoils of War," by John Tirman

Peace and war


Hear My Testimony

María Teresa Tula, Human Rights Activist of El Salvador
Editor: Lynn Stephen
South End Press, Cambridge, 1994, 236 pages, $15.95
ISBN: 0896084841

Following in the footsteps of Rigoberta Menchu, Maria Teresa Tula describes her childhood, marriage, and growing family as well as her political consciousness, activism, imprisonment and torture. The human side of the civil war in El Salvador and decades of repression come to the fore in this woman's tale of extraordinary courage and ordinary labor.

"It warms the soul to realize the heights to which women like Maria Teresa can soar when struggling for a cause they believe in." --Medea Benjamin, Director, Global Exchange

"Hear My Testimony is a compelling, auto-biographical account of a human rights activist in El Salvador during its worst episodes of political and social violence." ----Women in Libraries

Women Writing Resistance
Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean

Editor: Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez
South End Press, 2004
Pages: 241, $18.00, ISBN: 0896087085

This necessary collection of short essays and poems by authors/activists presents the strong voices of 18 women. They bear witness to the violence and oppression suffered by women and Indigenous in Latin America, they rage against racism and homophobia, they proclaim their identity and shared experience as women of color, and they hope and demand action for a more equal future. Includes writings by Rigoberta Menchú, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Edwidge Danticat, Julia Alvarez, and Jamaica Kincaid. A beautiful book.

"In this volume some of the finest women writers of Latin America and the Carribbean give us history re-told, language and identity refigured, and resistance write large and loud. Their visionary thinking and beautiful, clear voices tell us what we urgently need to hear and know. The sheer force of word and spirit gathered within these pages helps us vision the world we should work for."
- Elisabeth Alexander, author of The Venus Hottentots

War Talk

Arundhati Roy
154 pages, 2003 0-89608-724-7 $12.00 paper
0-89608-723-9 $40.00 cloth

Arundhati Roy, the internationally acclaimed author of The God of Small Things, addresses issues of democracy and dissent, racism and empire, and war and peace in this collection of new essays.

The eloquence, passion, and political insight of Roy's political essays have added legions of readers to those already familiar with her Booker Prize-winning novel. Invited to lecture as part of the prestigious Lannan Foundation series on the first anniversary of the unconscionable attacks of September 11, 2001, Roy challenged those who equate dissent with being "anti-American." Her previous essays on globalization and dissent have led many to see Roy as "India's most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence" (New York Times).

War Talk collects new essays by this prolific writer. Her work highlights the global rise of religious and racial violence. From the horrific programs against Muslims in Gujarat, India, to U.S. demands for war on Iraq, Roy confronts the call to militarism. Desperately working against the backdrop of the nuclear recklessness between her homeland and Pakistan, she calls into question the equation of nation and ethnicity. And throughout her essays, Roy interrogates her own roles as "writer" and "activist."

"If [Roy] continues to upset the globalization applecart like a Tom Paine pamphleteer, she will either be greatly honored or thrown in jail," wrote Pawl Hawken in Wired Magazine. In fact she was jailed in March 2002, when India's Supreme Court found Roy in contempt of the court after months of attempting to silence her criticism of the government.

Fully annotated versions of all Roy's most recent essays, including her acclaimed Lannan Foundation lecture from September 2002, are included in War Talk.

Fortress America

William Greider
BBS

Spoils of War:
The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade

John Tirman
The Free Press