I came across this book when I read [b:同志少女よ、敵を撃て|59703631|同志少女よ、敵を撃て|逢坂 冬馬|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1637928999l/59703631._SX50_.jpg|94014968] earlier this year. The author quoted a line from Alexievich's book in the epigraph. The novel was awesome, but its source material was even more intense. I kept thinking about the title as I made my way through the audiobook night after night. These women were capable and brave soldiers, nurses, drivers, typewritists, and telegraphers. They had agency. Yet the title says that war doesn't have a woman's face. The meaning is everywhere, the de-gendering process of becoming a soldier and the gender inequality after the war, an interruption or termination of motherhood. But the meaning became most clear when I thought about why Alexievich chose to write the Soviet women soldiers' experience as an oral history. There is something very feminist about oral history, its disavowal of grand narrating or stuffy debate about the causes of events. What it lacks in comprehensiveness, it delivers with immediacy and realness.

Follow-up books and articles I want to read :
- Jessica Trisko Darden, Alexis Henshaw, and Ora Skelezy (2019) [b:Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars|43335190|Insurgent Women Female Combatants in Civil Wars|Jessica Trisko Darden|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546032400l/43335190._SX50_.jpg|67254389]
- Cynthia Enloe (1989) [b:Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics Updated Edition |236066|Bananas, Beaches and Bases Making Feminist Sense of International Politics Updated Edition |Cynthia Enloe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1391816790l/236066._SY75_.jpg|228645]
- Jenny Nordberg (2014) [b:The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan|18077802|The Underground Girls of Kabul In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan|Jenny Nordberg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387054886l/18077802._SY75_.jpg|25384179]
- Svetlana Alexievich (2013) [b:Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets|30200112|Secondhand Time The Last of the Soviets|Svetlana Alexievich|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1463438551l/30200112._SY75_.jpg|27225929] by
- Lindsey O'Rourke (2009) "What's special about female suicide terrorism?"
- Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry (2007) [b:Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics|2579878|Mothers, Monsters, Whores Women's Violence in Global Politics|Laura Sjoberg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1317070557l/2579878._SY75_.jpg|2594550]
- Dara Kay Cohen (2013) "Female combatants and the perpetration of violence: wartime rape in Sierra Leone"