Customer Reviews

Sandino's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle

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Sandino's daughters is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of the Nicaraguan revolution and for feminists everywhere! The stories in this book are sometimes painful, sometimes triumphant, but always powerful. This is a classic and a beautiful book.

Randall's examination of the role women played in the Nicaraguan revolution is interesting for its unique look at a fairly commonplace civil war fought in the klieg lights of the Cold War. The author interviewed many women who had spent years working with and for the FSLN and later became involved in the Sandanista government.

That the book was first published in 1981, so soon after the Sandanistas assumed power and before the term "Contras" had become ubiquitous, gives it an eery, time-warp feel. Read from the perspective of 1999, the frequent use of words like "comrade", "cells", and "revolutionary struggle" seems rather quaint.

This book is not really journalism in the traditional sense, as the author has little interest in exploring the possible government-related problems of post-Somoza Nicaragua. But the overall reading experience does reinforce the old adage that journalism is the first draft of history.

In short, Sandino's Daughters is worthwhile for those readers who want a better feel for the ideological mood of Central America in the early 1980s, and who are interested in how non-traditional revolutionaries (i.e., women) played a significant role.