University Press of America
Pages: 138
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-7618-6343-4 • Paperback • May 2014 • $38.99 • (£30.00)
978-0-7618-6344-1 • eBook • May 2014 • $37.00 • (£30.00)
Elizabeth Desnoyers-Colas, PhD, is assistant professor of communication and the faculty coordinator of the African American Male Initiative Program at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia. A retired U.S. Air Force Major, her past military duties include serving as a speechwriter for senior DOD military and civilian officials on EEO/EO related issues and operating as the director of the Joint Task Force Information Bureau, Haitian Refuge Humanitarian Rescue Effort, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She also served in Operation Desert Storm and was deployed to Central Air Forces, Forward, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, as the director of Public Affairs/Protocol.
Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Marching as to War: Personal Narratives of African American Women’s Experiences in the Gulf Wars
Chapter Two: Why We Serve: An Historical Overview of African American Women’s Military Service from the Revolutionary War Through the Gulf Wars
Chapter Three: “Sistahs” of Defense: Duties and Dangers of African American Women in Service in the Gulf Wars
Chapter Four: My Child Left Behind: The Family and Child Care Challenges Faced by African American Gulf War Servicewomen
Chapter Five: What Happens in the Desert Stays in the Desert: African American Women Confront Racism and Sexism in the Gulf
Chapter Six: Where My Health Comes From: African American Servicewomen Battle Gulf War Illnesses
Epilogue: Marching as to War―Final Thoughts
Bibliography
Index
Desnoyers-Colas fills in some gaps in the literature on African American women in the military. An African American and a retired US Air Force major, the author grew up in a military family and deployed to several sites in the Persian Gulf during recent wars. The first, and best, of her six short chapters contrasts media coverage of Iraq War POWs Shoshanna Johnson (black) and Jessica Lynch (white); the second provides a historical overview of African American women in the military, beginning with the Revolutionary War. Each chapter thereafter has a theme (duties and dangers, family and child care, racism and sexism, and Gulf War illnesses), introduced with the author’s own story and illustrated with material drawn from interviews with other veterans of the Gulf Wars. The chapters are smoothly written but anecdotal, with a 'war stories' quality that begs for serious scholarly engagement. Material on PTSD in the last chapter, for example, strains credulity in light of the combat support roles the women performed. Some greater reflection on the racial and neocolonial subtexts of the wars would have made this a better book. Summing Up: Recommended. Public, general, and undergraduate collections.
— Choice Reviews