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The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War

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I was reminded while reading COUNTRY by Belli of a passage early in Rebecca West's BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON in which she writes that men suffer from lunacy of being too much of the world, and women suffer from being too local, too involved in their own personal lives. Belli does not suffer either, but rather finds a balance in her narration between the concerns of her worldly life with the concerns of her personal life. She recounts in similar voice the dramas of her involvement with the Sandinistas and her rise in the eventual government the rebel group achieved and the complications of her personal life as her first marriage and then her second crumbled.

She writes about herself as a Doña Quixote, seeking to make the world a better place, and having her own adventures, and the titles of each chapter charmingly advance this thematic idea, having a similar style to Cervantes' work (which I am reading now). For example, chapter 22 is titled, "On the hectic preparations for the attacks and on how I was unexpectedly called to perform a dangerous mission." Belli gives a compelling account in these chapters of the egregious human rights violations of the Somoza dictatorship that the Sandinistas sought to overthrow. The reader is walked through her early life, the daily life of a privileged Nicaraguan who felt a moral imperative to make a change in the government of her country. She also recounts her feelings about the Reagan administration's support of the Contras who sought to overthrow the Sandinista government. The actions of the United States, according to Belli in COUNTRY, were illustrative of why the United States is not universally beloved. This empire had a personal and profound impact on the author, who now lives in the United States part of the time with her third husband.

Belli is an accomplished poet and writer, and it shows in her work. She draws the picture of her life clearly and vividly, not falling prey to the "telling not showing" disease many nonwriters have when they seek to illustrate their own lives.

Belli writes with heartbreak of how the Sandinistas lost the election soon after they effected the end of the Somoza regime, but it is touching and shows the lasting legacy of the Sandinista revolution: It gave Nicaraguans the right to vote for their own leaders.

The Power of Passion in Gioconda Belli's
The Country Under My Skin

The passions of womanhood must be God's greatest gift to humanity. If every woman would stand up and cultivate this treasure, each in her own way and with her individual talents, they could generate the inherent wisdom, power and goodness of their passions into peace. It is improbable that it could be world peace, and yet, the somehow more profound and practical inner peace is what those women would treasure most. If there was any doubt that this was possible, it was completely dispelled after journeying through Gioconda Belli's remarkable memoir, The Country Under My Skin.

Hers is a tale of passion told through the guises of love, patriotism, motherhood, poetry and war. She introduces herself as the protected, educated daughter of respectable, bourgeois parents who would be more comfortable at a country club than at a secret meeting of subversive revolutionaries. But it is not long before she begins to reveal how she started as one and became the other. Each chapter tunnels further into what makes her tick, where those passions come from and how they develop from a wild, immature spark into the ardent beliefs and controlled fire of her immense passions. She may be intense, but nobody would accuse Belli of being wishy-washy.

She takes us on a journey of self-discovery, showing us the important people and events that shaped her. From such notable personalities as Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, and the flurry of other well known artists, writers, subversives, and politicians she introduces, to the intimate intricacies of her own family, Belli's characters help define her. In a haunting and poignant way, what she finds in herself reveals that which all women possess: the passions of womanhood. It is this passion that forces her to face the reality of life in Nicaragua and make a choice to accept the striking chasms between affluence and poverty, high ideals and censorship, freedom and tyranny. Once her choice has been made, there is no turning back: that would mean denying the possibilities of her dreams and those passions. Once she chooses the Sandanista cause, the framework for her tale has been laid.

It is through the eyes of the revolutionary that we meet the mother, the poet, the friend, the lover and the woman that is Gioconda Belli. This unique perspective affords the reader the insight to understand how she can be all of these things without being a contradiction to herself. A young mother who puts her family at risk under a totalitarian dictatorship by joining the forces for change, it may seem a strange choice to make. In her view, the responsibility she had to her children was to provide for them a better world to live in than the one she inherited. In other words, how could she accept her position in society and ignore what she knew to be right? I don't think she could have and I am glad she didn't.

This is the legacy of Belli: she leads by example. Not that every debutante should pick up an AK-47 and support armed resistance for a cause, but that each woman should find her passion and use that strength to power her dreams and actions for a better future. Her story is one of conflict: the external forces of war and the internal turmoil of choices amid the stark realities of life. This inner struggle exposes the most tender, vulnerable side of the warrior. In the stories of her three marriages, her four children, and the several lovers in between, there is a moving honesty in her voice that is unafraid of critique or of other people's values. She may question her motives and tenacity, but in her effort to resolve these forces, we see our own choices and cannot condemn hers.

It is this very honesty that allows us to accept her choices and not judge her actions. Through her rich language and haunting descriptions we come to feel her longings, understand her not just as a revolutionary and poet, but also in a more complete way, as a woman. This transformation does not follow any plot or storyline. It is how we discover ourselves in her words. In the most haunting passage of her tale, she leaves the cerebral world of thought and logic behind to describe how she felt after having chosen to terminate a pregnancy:

"I still remember the emptiness I felt on the flight home to Nicaragua, like a gutted house with only its façade left standing. For many years I cried over what could have been. I suffered for every woman who has ever found herself torn by life-or-death decisions, decisions that are our right, but that forever leave a bomb crater in our hearts, a disaster zone where the ghost of a child wanders, laughing the laughter that never was, forever gazing at us wistfully for the life we denied it."

These are the words of anguish. They are the personal, lonely torment of her choice. In the true spirit of art, she transcends her own words and is inspired to channel the
ineffability of emotion. The ability to infuse words with the feelings and passions that encompass her is her greatest gift, to herself and her readers.

The author of four novels and several collections of poetry, Gioconda Belli encapsulates the power and passions of womanhood. The Country Under My Skin, subtitled "a memoir of love and war" is far more than that. It is the portrait of a woman whose choices and determination exceed the expectations of her position, her gender, and herself. What she has accomplished in those reminiscences is nothing short of exceptional and has provided a guide for personal growth, intimate introspection, sublime description, and intense integrity that will serve as a role model for all women wishing to capture and empower themselves with the force of their own passions.

Belli's extraordinary memoir brings intimacy, emotional sensitivity, and depth to the story of Nicaragua's revolution. Whether she is giving birth in a squalid clinic, exiled from her country, learning to shoot, being dropped from a helicopter - in high heels - or negotiating with Fidel, we never forget she and the other revolutionaries are all people struggling to live, to love, to raise their children, care for their parents, and save their country all at once. Never before have I read a political memoir that told me what I wanted to know about revolution - not just the events and the speeches, the strategies and the fights, but how it felt, how one lived it, what kind of person Fidel was, Ortega, and the rest. Belli tells the tale with all its drama, but doesn't leave out the profoundly complex personal texture.

Gioconda Belli's most recent book may be the best memoir I have ever read. It is the beautiful and inspiring story of an amazing woman - a woman who dared to defy what convention expected of her -- in order to help topple a murderous dictator. It is also the gripping story of a historical decade in Central America and in the world, told from a distinctly female point of view. And last but not least, it is the awesome story of a life that has been anything but self-indulgent, one that speaks (in Ms. Belli's words) "of the joy that comes from surrendering the "I" and embracing the "we." This book reads like an epic poem: it is filled with love and war, passions and dreams, the personal and the political. This is a truly awe-inspiring memoir, and I highly recommend it.

A breathtakingly beautiful, poetic book about a woman -- a Nicaraguan mother, an artist, an activist -- whose love for freedom and her country, along with her own daring, take her on amazing adventures during the time of the overthrow of a brutal dictator...Her life and gorgeous writing make an extraordinary story...This is my favorite book in a decade -- heartfelt, passionate, dazzling, soaring personal memoir by an internationally renowned poet that will take your breath away.

"The Country Under My Skin" is a courageous autobiography--a deeply personal "Memoir of Love and War." The author, Gioconda Belli, is a famous Latin American poet and Sandinista revolutionary.

This memoir can be read on three levels.

For those who love revolutionary or social history, Belli's memoir gives a unique female insider's perspective on the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Many past reviewers, apparently men, seem to approach this book with this historical dimension squarely in focus. Understandably, some are disappointed by the unusual female perspective. However, as a woman, I was overjoyed to find a dangerous real life story of revolution from a woman's point of view.

"I stole across the room to open the door of my daughters' room. I stood there for what must have been a long time, watching their peaceful faces as they slept in their orange-colored beds. Melissa with her pacifier and Maryam with her arms wide open. If only I could take them back into my womb to shelter them. I wanted a womb to hide in with them, the warm safety of the amniotic fluid. At least Nicaragua wasn't like Argentina, or Chile, where the dictatorships tortured and killed children along with their parents. I didn't fear for their lives--what I feared was the idea of them being left all alone. Did I have any right, as a mother, to take such risks?...But my fate was sealed. Inside of me there wasn't the slightest impulse to turn back. A threat like this, in fact, had the opposite effect: it fed the rage I felt for the dictatorship, for a system against which we, the citizens, had no form of defense...Then and there, I vowed to myself that I wouldn't allow fear to turn me into a passive observer of all the ills and injustices that surrounded me" (p. 77-78).

For those who love romance, Belli's book is overflowing with deep, heart-felt emotion--passion for country, passion for life, passion for children, passion for family, passion for community, passion for cause, and naturally, passion for the many powerful and famous revoluntionary men in her life. She reveals in heart-wrenching clarity how her lovers possessed her, and failed her, and how she idealized them, and failed them.

"So we kissed, gasping with so much want as we had been painfully holding up. But when he tried to go after my shirt, my skirt, I stopped his hands. I buried by head on his chest, hushing him, telling him it would be better if we tried to stay put. Let's not go any further, I said. You better talk to me, talk to me about what you've been doing. My heart was beating fast and hard, and a fire from hell was burning my cheeks" (p. 200).

For those who love to analyze the inner psychological workings of a human life, Belli's book is an intensely revealing coming of age saga--here, Belli's purpose is clearly not to glorify, but rather, through the act of writing, to discover and comes to terms with the woman she is today. For this reader, it became very clear that Belli is one of those glorious persons of rare artistic temperament who is "Touched with Fire" (see Kay Redfield Jamison's book by the same title). As I read this book, I ached for Belli's pain, and felt my heart soar with her joy and courage.

"To me, poetry was a gift. It was water flowing from a spring within me, that channeled onto the page, effortlessly. I also thought of it as energy produced by an unseen organ in my body--a sensory antenna, perhaps, that would capture aromas, feelings, sensations, and every so often would release a flash of illunimation. If I had paper, pen, and silence at hand when the first verse broke into my consciousness, that thunderbolt would ignite a poem" (p. 182).

"I wrote. I wrote poems of love and songs of desperation. I became so depressed that some days I couldn't get out of bed" (p. 290).

"I didn't know how to be alone. I had exposed myself to bullets, death; I had smuggled weapons, given speeches, received awards, had children--so many things, but a life without men, without love, was alien to me, I felt I had no existence unless a man's voice said my name and a man's love rendered my life worthwile. It was not a question of denying men a role in my life, but I was determined to stop being emotionally dependent on them. I forced myself to examine my vulnerabilities: I had filled a raw emotional void, tried to make up for affection I had lacked, by asserting myself and my femininity mostly though my sexuality and my powers of seduction, ignoring and underestimating my other gifts. I thought nothing of my tenacity, or my optimism...I also understood that I loved my children, but only as reflections, only in two dimensions, as if they were just simple, sweet creatures, and I could not see that below the surface they too had fears, complexities" (p. 290).

It was so easy to love this book. "The Country Under My Skin" is well-crafted, often poetic, and reads better than most novels. When I finished it, I felt a deep emotional bond with Belli. What a courageous and beautiful soul she is!

It's hard to know how to start writing about Gioconda Belli's autobiography, The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War, since it reached and touched me in so many ways.

This is the story of a woman, a mother, a revolutionary fighter, now living in Santa Monica, who used to wear a machine gun as a part of her JOB!


To read the life story of a contemporary, of my generation, who has done so much, lived with such vivacity and courage and passion is truly an inspiration. To see the USA through the eyes of someone who fought against a cruel, murderous, ugly dictator, only to have a right wing American president, Ronald Reagan, use all the power within his reach to destroy the fruits of her people's struggle for democracy-- is eye-opening.

Gioconda Belli weaves a story of intrigue, power, politics and sensuality that had me turning the pages like, usually, only the best potboiler fiction novel can do. It is a testimony to women's rights the way she functioned as a Sandinista revolutionary while bearing three children, raising a family and taking down the Somoza dictatorship, becoming an award winning writer-poet and traveling the world as a diplomat-representative of the revolutionary government she played a major role of bringing into power.

As an activist writer, publisher in the USA, (of the website opednews) this book came to me as an amazing wake-up call, demonstrating the many ways a people who are fighting a corrupt, malignant government and its leaders can tackle the challenge of taking control of the nation.

We in the USA who are fighting against those who are unraveling the constitution and democracy would do well to read and learn from Gioconda Belli. The steps she took as she became more politicized, more involved in the fight against the rich and powerful who would strip the rights and freedoms from her people are steps many of us have just begun to take. The courage and sacrifice she describes in her own life and the lives of her "companeros" is inspiring.

Reading about her experiences meeting with other revolutionaries, how different nations actually celebrate them and their fights for freedom, was a real eye-opener. Why doesn't the US honor the heroic men and women with the courage to take on the worst dictators? Because, too often, we are supporting and funding them? This must end. It is time that we invite the leaders of revolutions from all over the world to the US. Of course, for that reality to happen, there must be a revolution of some sort in the US-- one that rejects corporatism and the run-amuck out of control capitalism that the USA's lamestream media have sold us over the years.


While this is a book, that for me, was inspiring at many levels, one should not forget that Belli is an award winning poet and writer with many international awards for her work. The book is a pleasure to read. It will make you laugh and bring you tears of joy and sadness. It did for me.

The book was not one I'd have ever picked up on my own. It was recommended to me... strongly. I pass that recommendation forward to you. Give it a try. You won't be able to put it down.

*The Country Under My Skin* is Gioconda Belli's memoir of her years in the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua. It's a pretty easy read, but the culture and mores don't always translate well for American readers.

For instance, Belli never really states what the Sandinista movement was. She comments here and there on its structure and goals, but never really lays it out concretely. I think at least part of this is because she wrote the book in Spanish for a Nicaraguan audience, who would already be familiar with the Sandinistas and not need the explanations that Americans may. She also makes what Americans would consider a really overblown deal about poetry. We tend to think of poetry as nice, rhyming greeting card kind of stuff, but poetry in Latin America has had a much more political function than in the U.S., which the average reader may not know.

Belli herself comes across as a less than sterling person. I have to give her credit for being blunt and honest about this, but it was pretty off-putting after a while. While recounting her role as courier, driver, and intelligence gatherer for the Sandinistas, she also writes about how she "falls in love" (read: flops into bed) with every revolutionary bad boy who came her way, without ever confronting the trail of emotional wreckage she left behind her, and how she dragged her kids along with no qualms through such a risky and unstable lifestyle.

At the end of the book, Belli is living in the U.S. with her latest perfect partner and soulmate, while pining over her days in Nicaragua. Granted, her life was probably more exciting then, but I didn't get a sense she learned anything from it. In the end she seems like a rather self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing individual. I can't fault her directness and honesty, but I didn't find her a very sympathetic character.

So how to rate such a book? Well, the writing, at least in translation, is fairly good, but I never got a sense of the excitement and danger of Belli's Sandinista escapades, or any reason to laud her as a person. I'd have given it 2.5 stars just to be balanced, but I went up to 3 because, again, the book is a translation, which may explain why it comes out more pedestrian in English. It's not a bad book, but I wouldn't pay full price for it.

This book is required reading for us old Nicaragua buffs, who followed Nicaragua and the Sandinista revolution in the 80s.

Belli's account and connections with the newsmakers is incredible. a great read, even better in Spanish!

I often think my life is too simple to write an autobiography until I start wondering how complex women are. If I could only express how I sometimes feel when I have to choose between different paths, all the passions under my skin....
Then I read this book...
This is the story of a middle-upper class woman's true loves and passions: her family, her men, her country. All under one skin, all pulling her to different sides. How do you set your priorities? Do you die for your country or stay alive for your kids? Do you follow the status quo or break away and follow your dreams?
Belli's story is touching, the story of following an impossible dreams that at the end becomes true: a possible country, a possible love (that never becomes quite as hoped). Somoza, FSLN, democracy, love, marriage, motherhood all one story written in one language: poetry.