Customer Reviews

With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

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This is a timely and important illustration of the history of the struggle of the women of Afghanistan. Brodsky describes a "cosmopolitan" Afghanistan that many Westerners are unaware once existed. Once, a society where 40% of all medical doctors were women, Afghanistan disintegrated into a feudal society dominated by the Soviet occupation in the late 1970's and various fundamentalist regime changes (including the Taliban) throughout the next 20 years.

Brodsky's book is a powerful response to the influx of burqa-dominated books that hit the market last year in the wake of 9/11. While books on the subject of Afghan women over the past year have focused primarily on the burqa as the ultimate image of oppression, Brodsky's book expands this narrow view as she depicts the life and death struggles of women who have fought (and continue to fight) a slow but persistent battle to gain basic human rights in a fundamentalist society that views them as worth half that of a man. In fact, Brodsky shines some light on the history of the burqa noting that in some cultures it is a woman's choice whether or not to wear burqa - a topic not adequately addressed by other books currently on the market.

Set in motion prior to the events of 9/11, Brodsky began this project in early 2001 with the goal of documenting the struggles of RAWA through the scope of resilience studies. As the U.S. led attack on the Taliban brought heavy media attention to Afghan women, Brodsky picked up the pace of her research and has produced a timely book that will attract a wide range of educated, politically conscious readers.

With All Our Strength opens with a riveting (if revolting) depiction of the execution of a 35 year-old women in a sports stadium in Kabul. Accused of murdering her husband, Zarmeena is led to the stadium in burqa where she is forced to kneel before the assembled city and is executed. Her execution is portrayed as a warning to the women of Kabul. RAWA members managed to videotape the execution in secret - had they been discovered, their fate would have no doubt been the same.

And so goes this appalling account of life in Afghanistan. Though the history is somewhat repetitive at times, Brodsky's strength lies in effectively balancing Afghanistan's history with personal accounts of RAWA members and succeeds in creating an engaging and informative narrative that will leave readers demanding action.

A book you should read and pass on. The website also provides invaluable information - though you should be prepared for a very graphic encounter.

I have been a supporter of RAWA for four years, and thought I knew a lot about the organization, until I got my hands on this book. All of the questions that I have had over the years have been answered here, and then some! Brodsky's analysis and background information fill in the gaps for me in ways that nothing else has to date. I have read many books on Afghanistan, Afghan women, and even the other recent books that focus on RAWA, but this book is my best source yet. For anyone interested in helping this magificent organization, this book is a MUST read. I have given this book to family members and friends as gifts so that they may understand why RAWA is so important to me. I urge everyone who is even remotely concerned with women who resist to read this book. You will not be able to help but love RAWA and their spirit of resistance and strength. I thank Anne Brodsky for this enormous gift of information. Her contribution is truly in the spirit of RAWA, and I cannot encourage enough people to read it and to help these valiant women in their life-changing, tremendous work. If ever an organization deserved the attention of people all over the world, this is the one!

While there are a couple other books about RAWA, this one really stands out. It is thoughtful, thorough, well documented, and very readable, with excellent interview excerpts and stories. It explains a great deal that has never been available before about this amazing, all-volunteer, indigenous, pro-democracy, afghan women's group and how they have been able to build such an effective organization under such terrible circumstances in Afghanistan. RAWA has sometimes been mis-characterized, and this book corrects those misconceptions as well as discussing why it is sometimes depicted wrongly. It also very well describes the various facets of RAWA's work and organization, as well as the human side of their work and lives. Therefore, in addition to being an engrossing and useful account of RAWA, it tells and important and usually neglected slice of recent Afghan history...that of women. The book and RAWA itself are also an excellent example of organizing for change that could be useful across the globe. Worth reading!

I became fascinated with the work of RAWA about six months ago. I had never heard of the organization before and although I knew the Taliban was a terrible regime, I had no idea that pre and post Taliban rule there was this wonderful underground organization working to promote independence for women, hope and peace for the country. I have read quite a few books on Afghan's women's struggles, and many books with a focus on RAWA, and I have to say this one is by far the best book written on the organization of RAWA. Anne Brodsky spent much time in both Afghanistan, and Pakistan, observing, interviewing and living with supporters and members of RAWA. None of the other books I have read on the subject get as deep into the underground workings of this incredible group of people. Unlike some of the other books I have read by authors that have visited with RAWA members, Anne Brodsky has a journalistic style of writing, where her personal opinions don't over dominate the book. She is very objective, and writes much like an observer, which I really appreciated. I highly recommend this book.

From its opening pages, describing the mobilization of RAWA members to clandestinely record, at tremendous personal risk, the Taliban's public execution of a woman, Anne Brodsky's book affords the reader a gripping account of a remarkable, dedicated group of individuals. The shocking footage of the burqa-clad figure toppling to the ground after a rifle-shot to the head was subsequently seen by audiences the world over; that it was seen at all was entirely due to the courage and determination of the members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

Each chapter of "With All Our Strength" carries as its title a verse from poetry written by the extraordinary woman who founded RAWA - Meena, murdered at age 30. This apt touch presages the exceptional degree to which Brodsky fashions her narrative from the words of RAWA's members. Unlike so many other writers and journalists who have ventured of late into this geographical and political territory, Brodsky does not project herself front and center into her tale. Instead, she serves as a witness - an attentive, informed, empathetic one - who helps put the RAWA phenomenon into cogent historical, political and sociological context. No mean feat, given the complexities of the modern history of this region, as well as the sheer number of voices she interweaves into her narrative. What's more, while contributing to the central story of RAWA's rise and ongoing struggles, these voices also emerge, distinctly and movingly, as those of individual women who have made difficult choices and extraordinary sacrifices in the effort to create change.

These days, with the Bush Administration taking credit for bringing freedom to Afghanistan, it is vital to recognize the dedication of the RAWA members who militated for democracy and women's rights while the U.S. was supporting the forces that coalesced into the savagely misogynistic Taliban. It its parts and as a whole, "With All Our Strength" portrays the bravery of individuals and the power of collective action in the face of evil. Profiles in courage, indeed.

The founder of RAWA, a visionary woman by the name of Meena, who was subsequently assassinated for her activism in 1987, joined together with four of her acquaintances from high school and university in 1977 to establish RAWA which quickly expanded to include a core group of eleven women. Anne Brodsky, the author, quotes Shaima, now a senior member of RAWA, about her memory of the early days. "We were daily witnesses of rape, of domestic violence in families and of oppressions in work and all aspects of life. It was obvious that women always had the inferior role in family, society, everywhere. And we thought that one woman cannot change all of this; there needed to be many women coming together, establishing a group movement to get rid of these inequalities."
A term in Dari, one of the common languages of Afghanistan, "mushti dar dahan," or "a fist in the mouth", is particularly apt in describing just how revolutionary these founding members were. Shaima explains that women had to be "a fist in the mouth" not only towards the men in their families, but to society and government, where they had no position of respect or leadership.
Education and consciousness raising, along with a great need for security, were the first steps these women took. "From the beginning we thought we needed ways to continue this struggle because we knew that it would not take 1 or 2 years, but decades or centuries and in order to continue this struggle the first bricks needed to be laid in such a way that when others continued to build it would work." (Shaima) Against a background of ever changing governments, from the overthrow of the king, a brief flirtation with democracy, the takeover of the Soviet Union for ten years and finally the horribly oppressive Taliban regime, the women of RAWA and their male supporters have continued to educate and train women to become leaders.
Central to RAWA's philosophy and methods is an alternative model of education based on the truly democratic and relatively "flat hierarchy." "...members are not micromanaged when in new positions, but rather allowed to find what they think is the best way to carry out an activity." Because RAWA uses a committee structure for decision making, a great deal of innovation and flexibility is allowed. Activities are carried on in a great many locations, hence the leadership is de-centralized. In Pakistan in 1984, Meena founded the Watan boarding schools for girls and boys. These schools operated for 10 years and many of the younger women of RAWA and their male supporters are graduates of these two schools. Almost all of them had experienced war, personal loss and family trauma as young children, so "students were encouraged to treat each other as sisters and brothers.... This atmosphere helped students cope...." It also created strong bonds that even today are the model of community building that is applied throughout RAWA's activities.
Brodsky's book is both an historical account and a call to action. These courageous women need our support, and in getting to know their stories, we can learn from them how to build a future based on equality for women. They are facing the toughest odds and in overcoming obstacles they have a lot to teach us.

In alot of ways, the history of RAWA is the history of 20th Century Afghanistan.

The story starts from Meena's (RAWA's founder) father, and proceeds right through her short but highly influential life, and carries on with the 26 year history of the organization, fighting first the Soviet occupation, then the fundamentalist warlords it left behind, then the Taliban, then the US occupation.

You can only read in awe at the strength and persistence of each of RAWA's members. Forced to run their operations from outside the country to avoid persecution and even death, RAWA fights tirelessly for the most basic of rights for the women of Afghanistan.

The book is filled with countless stories, anecdotes and interviews from members of the organization as well as analysis from the author's perspective with her background as a community psychologist.

RAWA's story is a moving one, but this book does have a couple of flaws without which it would probably be more accessible and wider in appeal.

Partly because of the difficulty in gathering information about RAWA (so much of what they do has to be kept tightly secret even from one member to the next), the book is forced to flow between story, and research project. The author set out for it to be a study of RAWA but it seems due to the nature of the organization it ended up somewhere outside of that. It begins in chronological order but ends up skipping back and forth, and there isn't great continuity between the order of ideas and concepts expressed.

Don't get me wrong - the book still deserves 4 stars, but if you're a lighter reader or don't have a lot of time for the work, you might find it a little challenging.

The Kindle edition also has a problem with the text sizing, which caused all text in quotations to be too small to read relative to the surrounding text. (for me anyway)

Regardless, the author deserves all credit for undertaking such a mammoth task, and even higher praise for bringing this special organization closer to the spotlight at such an important time.

I really liked Anne Brodsky's book because you can tell that she really got in there with the women of RAWA to tell a true story about them. As it says in the book, many tell tales of RAWA, but they make them one-dimentional. In other books and publications, it felt more like a story of heroines, instead of real women who are actually sticking their neck out and seriously risking their lives to help people. Not just women, people. This was a very good book and I think it was great that she spent time there with the women.

I first learned about RAWA and the deplorable situation for women in Afghanistan several years ago in a pre-9/11 magazine article. I was horrified by what I read about the Taliban and the unimaginable restrictions on and persecution of Afghan women. I wanted to help, and I was excited when I learned about RAWA and what they were doing to help the women of Afghanistan. Since then I've searched for more information on RAWA, and this book was the answer. Ms. Brodsky's book is well researched (she spent time in both Afghanistan and Pakistan with RAWA members and was the first writer to be given such unrestricted access to them). In her book I learned information about the history of RAWA, their organizational structure and operations (which was fascinating to me), and their struggle to overcome enormous obstacles with limited funds. Most mesmerizing for me, though, were the author's many excerpts of interviews with members of RAWA, both new members and those who have been with the organization almost since its inception. After reading this book, I was so impressed with the members of RAWA -- with their strength and courage, their fierce determination to better the lives of the women of their country, their great personal sacrifice, and their total devotion to their cause that I am sending a monthly donation to them. (Ms. Brodsky is donating all of her profits from this book to RAWA.) This book is a must-read for anyone interested in learning more about RAWA or to anyone interested in feminist issues or resistance movements.