Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or edited several books and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. As of the fall of 2023, she will be the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.
The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.
Lan Cao is a Vietnamese American professor and author. She wrote her debut novel Monkey Bridge in 1997, and her second novel, The Lotus and the Storm in 2014. She is a professor of law at the Chapman University School of Law, specializing in international business and trade, international law, and development. She received her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. She has taught at Brooklyn Law School, Duke Law School, Michigan Law School and William & Mary Law School.
Latvian literature began to develop in the 18th century. Latvian secular literature began with Gotthard Friedrich Stender who produced didactic tales or idyllic portrayals of country life.
A Woman in Berlin is a memoir by German journalist Marta Hillers, originally released anonymously in 1954. The identity of Hillers as the author was not revealed until 2003, after her death. The memoir covers the period between 20 April and 22 June 1945 in Berlin during the capture and occupation of the city by the Red Army. The work depicts the widespread rape of civilians by Soviet soldiers, including the rape of the author. It also looks at a woman's pragmatic approach to survival, which involved relying on Soviet officers for protection.
Matrona Dmitrievna Nikonova is a canonized saint of the Russian Orthodox Church who is said to have had the gifts of prophecy, spiritual vision, and healing from early childhood.
Kim Chernin, writer, editor and spiritual counselor, published numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry centered on women's search for self. In the early eighties, The Obsession and the national bestseller The Hungry Self were among the first popular books addressing women's eating disorders. She is best known for her memoir, In My Mother's House: A Daughter's Story, which was one of the first books on mother-daughter relationships. Her memoir was nominated for a Chronicle Critics Award and chosen as Alice Walker’s Favorite Book of the Year in the New York Times, 1983. Her first novel, The Flame Bearers was a New York Times Notable Book.
Summer's Blood is a Canadian horror film directed by Lee Demarbre and starring Ashley Greene. It was released directly to DVD on November 10, 2009.
Maria's Lovers is a 1984 American drama film directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Nastassja Kinski, John Savage, and Robert Mitchum. The plot follows a soldier returning from World War II who marries the woman of his dreams, but he is unable to consummate his marriage, ruining the couple's chances of a shared happiness. The film is the first American feature film by Konchalovsky and opened the 41st Venice International Film Festival. Maria's Lovers also was nominated César Award for Best Foreign Film.
As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II, mass rapes of women took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation of Germany by soldiers from all advancing Allied armies, although a majority of scholars agree that the records show that a majority of the rapes were committed by Soviet occupation troops. The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence.
Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's non-violent peace movement, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Her efforts to end the war, along with her collaborator Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, helped usher in a period of peace and enabled a free election in 2005 that Sirleaf won. Gbowee and Sirleaf, along with Tawakkul Karman, were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."
Ceremony is a novel by writer Leslie Marmon Silko, first published by Viking Press in March 1977. The title Ceremony is based on the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Navajo and Pueblo people.
Pregnancy is a potential result of rape. It has been studied in the context of war, particularly as a tool for genocide, as well as in other unrelated contexts, such as rape by a stranger, statutory rape, incest, and underage pregnancy. The scientific consensus is that rape is at least as likely to lead to pregnancy as consensual sexual intercourse, with some studies suggesting rape may actually result in higher rates of pregnancy than consensual intercourse.
Nonna Bannister was a Russian-American author and Holocaust survivor. She is best known for her memoir, The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister, a collection of diary entries and memoirs she wrote before, during, and after her time in a World War II German labor camp and kept hidden in a pillow.
Still Alive (2001) written by Ruth Klüger, is a memoir of her experiences growing up in Nazi-occupied Vienna and later in the concentration camps of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Christianstadt. However, as it's written by Klüger as a 70-year-old woman, the memoir goes beyond her experience as an inmate, chronicling her escape from Christianstadt's death march with her mother and adopted sister, Susi. The narrative ends not only with their self-liberation, or even with the general liberation by Allied forces, but goes beyond to her life as a post-war refugee. She outlines for the reader the difficulties she experienced in migrating to America, as well as the challenges and culture shock she faced as a foreigner trying to obtain an education and a place in society.
Kim Bok-dong was a human rights activist that campaigned against sexual slavery and war rape. She was a young woman who was put into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army; a military that recruited girls between the ages of 10 and 18 years of age from colonized and occupied countries from the 1930s until the end of World War II. From age 14, she was put into comfort stations for eight years across different countries in Asia. Her experiences led her to become an activist; advocating the end of war-time sexual violence, anti-imperialism, workers' rights, and inter-Korean reconciliation. Along with the other "comfort women", she made the three-fold demand from the Japanese government: a formal state-level apology, reparations, and correction of Japanese history. In addition, Kim Bok-dong herself also supported other "comfort women" to step forward, and was a spokesperson in the "comfort women" movement. Kim Bok-dong died in Seoul, South Korea, in a hospital on January 28, 2019.
White Chrysanthemum is a novel written by Mary Lynn Bracht. It was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2018. The novel is based on comfort women, Korea, Japan, and history. The novel has fictional names, characters, places, and incidents. It is written in dual timelines that are split between the two women: Hana's life during the 1940s and Emi's life in 2011. The novel switches between the two women's perspectives intermittently during the novel. One chapter of the novel is told from the perspective of YoonHui, Emi's daughter. The novel includes a map from 1943, further readings, and a notable dates section.
Beanpole is a 2019 Russian drama film directed by Kantemir Balagov. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. At Cannes, Balagov won the Un Certain Regard Best Director Award and the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film in the Un Certain Regard section. It was selected as the Russian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, making the December shortlist.
Rape, among other acts of wartime sexual violence, was frequently committed against female Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War. It was an aspect of the various human rights abuses perpetrated by the United States and South Korea, as well as by local Vietnamese combatants. According to American political scientist Elisabeth Jean Wood, the sexual violation of women by American military personnel was tolerated by their commanders. American professor Gina Marie Weaver stated that not only were documented crimes against Vietnamese women by American soldiers ignored during the international legal discourse that occurred immediately after the conflict, but modern feminists and other anti-war rape campaigners, as well as historians, have continued to dismiss them.
Agate Nesaule was a Latvian-born American writer and professor of English on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. Her 1995 memoir A Woman in Amber won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1996.
