Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq [Paperback]

Lisa Bowden (Editor), Shannon Cain (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2008

POWDER brings us poetry and personal essays from 19 women who have served in all branches of the United States military. Contributors to Powder have seen conflicts from Somalia to Vietnam to Desert Shield. Many are book authors and winners of writing awards and fellowships; several hold MFAs from some of the country's finest programs. The essays and poems here are inspired by an attempted rape by a Navy SEAL; an album of photos of the enemy dead; heat exhaustion in Mosul; a first jump from an airplane; fending off advances from Iraqi men; interrogating suspected terrorists; the contemplation of suicide; and a poignant connection with women and children in Bosnia. Their writing exposes the frontline intersection of women and soldiering, describing from a steely-eyed female perspective the horror, the humor, the cultural clashes and the fear.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Contributors include Sharon Allen, Cameron Beattie, Judith K. Boyd, Dhana-Marie Branton, Charlotte Brock, Christy Clothier, Donna Dean, Deborah Fries, Victoria Hudson, Terry Hurley, Bobbie Dykema Katsanis, Anna Krawczuk, Elizabeth McDonald, Heather Paxton, K.G. Schneider, Martha Stanton, Elaine Little Tuman, Rachel Vigil and Khadijah Queen.

Product Details

• Paperback: 140 pages
• Publisher: Kore Press; 1st edition (November 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888553251
• ISBN-13: 978-1888553253
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #915,035 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Shannon Cain's debut short story collection is the winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for 2011. Her stories have been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the O. Henry Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has appeared in Tin House, The Colorado Review, the New England Review, American Short Fiction and Southwords: New Writing From Ireland. Shannon earned her MFA in 2005 from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

She is the co-editor, with Lisa Bowden, of Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq (Kore Press, 2008) and co-adapter of Coming In Hot, the stage adaptation of the book.

Shannon has taught fiction writing at the University of Arizona, Gotham Writers' Workshop, Arizona State University and as a private coach and workshop facilitator. In 2011 she was the Picador Guest Professor in Literature at the University of Leipzig in eastern Germany. More information is at www.shannoncain.com.

She is the Artist-in-Residence for the City of Tucson's Ward One and the fiction editor for Kore Press. Shannon lives in downtown Tucson with her teenage daughter. Her current creative project is Tucson, the Novel: An Experiment in Literature and Civil Discourse.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Giving voice to the female soldier, marine, airmen and sailor., December 17, 2010

By 

K. J. Shroyer "Kimmay!" (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq (Paperback)

A fantastic collection of stories written by the women that lived them. It is not a work for peace or war. It is raw and honest. The voices of women in the ranks are so frequently quieted or never able to be heard. As a female vet I have found inspiration from this book and the subsequent play based on it (Coming in Hot). In it I have found my voice and now use it for everyone to hear.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read for a Different Viewpoint, December 28, 2009

By 

K. Vathianakis "The Greek Marine" (New Milford, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq (Paperback)

I bought this as a gift for a female soldier in Afghanistan. She said it was a good easy read and she shared many viewpoints that were expressed in this book.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keeping their Powder dry, November 24, 2010

By 

Jack Lewis "jaxworx" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq (Paperback)

This is a helluva book, with lasting value that transcends its seeming Womens Studies 105 intent.

For straightforward literary value, K.G. Schneider's introduction to Air Force basic training, "Falling In," serves as both first-rate primer for the military virgin and a nostalgic tug for prior service members. Old soldiers will smile, recognizing in her hard-lacquered innocence their own clumsy first steps into the parallel universe of martial subculture. Schneider's clear love of words finally breaks through her initial distaste of the shorthand drawl of military patois, and we rejoice with her as she becomes not merely in, but of, her adopted global family.

Powder is blemished by the cant of its creators, their nakedly political agenda bleeding through every syllable of their preface and the foreword by Helen Benedict, a Columbia University journalism professor. The self-righteous near-understanding of the editors is further betrayed by the pseudo-definitions of grunt jargon sprinkled throughout the book; these should have been farmed out to someone with the pitch-perfect ear of, say, K.G. Schneider.

By now, we're all aware that post-modernists can't see the forest for the trees they're busily reducing to sawdust, but doctrinaire shrillness is irrelevant to the value of this text. The lucid narratives and whiskey-strong poetic imagery of Powder beg no feminist apology. Skip the prefatory nonsense and plunge into its forest of words. Like Little Red Riding Hood on her fabled mission to win the heart and mind of Grandma, you'll find it strange, frightening, and ultimately rewarding.