Tomorrow Perhaps the Future: Writers, Outsiders, and the Spanish Civil War

by Sarah Watling

An account of extraordinary artists and activists whose determination to live - and to create - with courage and conviction took them as far as the Spanish Civil War
What good does taking sides do? Confounded by the confrontational politics of the present day, with its threats to justice and democracy, Sarah Watling found herself drawn, surprisingly, to the Spanish Civil War. This was a conflict that galvanized tens of thousands of volunteers from around the world. In Spain, the choice seemed clear: you were either for fascism or against it. There, Watling found the stories of individuals for whom the war was a chance to oppose the forces that frightened them.

While Watling sifted through archives for lost journals, letters, and manifestos, she discovered writers and outsiders who had often been relegated to the shadows of infamous men like Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. Among others, she encountered the rookie journalist Martha Gellhorn coming into her own in Spain and the radical writer Josephine Herbst questioning her political allegiances. She found novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner embracing a freedom in Barcelona in 1936 impossible for queer women back at home in England, and, by contrast, Virginia Woolf struggling to keep the war out of her life, honing her intellectual position as she did so. For Salaria Kea, a nurse from Harlem, the war was a chance to combat the prejudice she experienced as a woman of color, but her story, like that of the Jewish photographer Gerda Taro, proved particularly difficult to resurrect from the records.

From a variety of backgrounds and politics, these women saw history coming, and went out to meet it. Yet the reality was far from simple. When does tolerance become apathy? Where is the line between solidarity and appropriation? Is writing about the revolution the same as actively participating in it? With clear, personal insight, Watling reveals that their answers are as relevant today as they were then.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Spain, War, Spanish Civil War, Biography, Womens

384 pages, Hardcover

Published May 9, 2023

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sarah Watling’s account deals with a group of writers, artists and activists broadly understood as ‘outsiders’ people whose identities and politics often gave them a different perspective on their societies. All of them connected in some way by their reactions to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Watling’s focus is primarily on women from progressive author Josephine Herbst to lesbian communists, and lifelong partners, novelist Sylvia Townsend-Warner and poet Valentine Ackland to pioneering, Jewish photojournalist Gerda Taro to socialite-turned-activist Nancy Cunard and the less-known Salaria Kea, the young, Black nurse who left her job in Harlem to tend to Republican wounded on the battlefield. All people who prioritised a form of solidarity and allyship that Watling clearly admires and represents as relevant to thinking through appropriate responses to today’s pressing political issues: from climate change to the assault on reproductive rights in contemporary America. Along the way Watling also considers the alternative stance taken by writers like Virginia Woolf who remained caught up in questions around pacifism, experiencing the war at a distance, that was eventually narrowed by a very personal loss. Watling contrasts Woolf’s ideas with those of poet Langston Hughes, journalists like Martha Gellhorn or Londoner Nan Green, all staunch believers in fighting for the causes they most valued.

Watling’s book is impressively researched, although it can be sprawling and breathless at times, a little over-ambitious in terms of its scope. However, it’s an accessible introduction to this important historical period. I particularly liked the way in which Watling paralleled developments in Spain with historical events elsewhere in Europe. I wasn’t always totally convinced by her analytical framework but I responded to her enthusiasm, even passion for her subjects – she’s particularly convincing when she’s writing about gender, cultural appropriation and privilege. It helps that Watling’s included a host of vivid, often fascinating material about her various subjects. Although her attempts to be comprehensive could be a bit overwhelming and bewildering at certain points. I also liked the immediacy of aspects of her commentary, the directness of her personal reflections on issues or questions arising from her research.

Watling’s account works well as an overview of the Spanish Civil War and the array of international participants it attracted, all keen to publicise the Republican cause and to aid in its fight, committed to standing up for democracy. I was particularly interested in finding out more about Gerda Taro whose work was overshadowed for many years by that of her husband Robert Capa; and about less obvious participants in the War like Salaria Kea. Despite its flaws, found this well worth reading and towards the end surprisingly moving.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Jonathan Cape for an ARC

Rating: 3 to 3.5 rounded up

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watling takes an unusual stance on the Spanish Civil War, a period that feels much written about: she focuses on writers, artists, journalists - but ones who are 'outsiders' i.e. non-Spaniards and asks what was it about this conflict, pre-WW2, that generated such political passion. Her convincing thesis is that these people were part of an anti-fascist alliance, a kind of rehearsal for WW2 complicated by the presence of Stalinist Russia even before the switching of alliances.

With attention to both the well-known and the less famous, this offers up an oblique view of the struggle for Republican Spain through the eyes of, for example, Virginia Woolf (who travelled in Nazi Germany before the war with her Jewish husband), Sylvia Townsend Warner (who I must read more about and from), the Mitfords, Nancy Cunard, Josephine Herbst and the new-to-me Salaria Kea, a young Black woman who left Harlem to nurse on the Republican side. Langston Hughes and Martha Gellhorn are prominent too.

Watling discusses the fact that one of the things that sparked her interest is a comparison with our political present: from the climate crisis to the assault on women's bodies, from the rise of the far right to the rolling back of progressive agendas - something that many of us struggle with is how to actively challenge political directions when even the right to peaceful protest is being shut down. Her take is that the Spanish Civil War was another crisis point where, for the people she is writing about, it was no longer possible to sit on the sidelines.

So, at heart, this is a sort of call to arms taking the past as a guidebook - far more than another book about Spain's struggle, as important as that still is, this is also a handbook of activism.

Many thanks to Jonathan Cape for an ARC via NetGalley

[Julian Worker · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the 1930s, people from across the UK, Europe, and the USA made their way to Spain to become part of the fight against fascism.

This book weaves together the experiences of various female writers such as Martha Gellhorn, Jessica Mitford, and Nancy Cunard as they move around the various parts of Spain where the war was raging.

When I bought the book I was really hoping for it to feature the writing of the authors as they reported back from the front line or commented on their journey to Spain, but this is not the case. The book is more of a history of the war and where the various authors were when certain events happened.

I suppose I was hoping for a few essays along the lines of Homage to Catalunya.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, very accessible account of the Spanish Civil War, told through the lives of a handful of non-Spanish, mostly female writers and others who played a part in the war in one way or another. Most pass in and out of the action, depending upon their involvement at various times, but there are several who remain a constant, including the fascinating Nancy Cunard. Written in a clear and almost conversational style, it brings a unique kind of focus to a time that has seen plenty of analysis, yet none quite like the way in which it is presented here.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me a lot longer to read than I anticipated. The focus here is on British and American women who volunteered for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War has been called the dress rehearsal for WWII. Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy supported Franco's Nationalists. If you are looking for more information involving the Spanish, this is not the book for you. it's also not one for you if you're looking for anything but the most basic info about the Spanish experience.

The author is obviously very emotionally invested in her topic. She calls all of the women by their first names and uses a tone like they are old friends. In this she gives secondhand accounts about larger topics and hints to a larger picture. But mostly it seems like she's interested in this one group of famous people, and this is her loooong list of namedropping and gossip. This makes me unsure of just how accurate her story is.

The positive here is that I learned about the intersections of the lives of these famous people. I also learned of quite a few new people. There just could have been a much better execution with more of the subjects and less of the author.

[Tom D'Hauwer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over de Spaanse burgeroorlog is al heel wat verschenen. In dit boek portretteert de auteur een aantal vrouwelijke journalisten, fotografen en verpleegsters die vanuit verschillende landen, met een verschillende afkomst naar Spanje trekken om de strijd (of te berichten over de strijd)tegen het fascisme aan te gaan. Niet alleen komt de gruwel van de oorlog aan bod, maar ook het (politiek) idealisme, de overtuiging en het engagement waarom men zich in het wespennest gooide. Ook het schrijven over de oorlog wordt geanalyseerd. Sterke vrouwen! Wie zich het nummer Taro van Alt-J herinnert, leest in dit boek ook haar levensverhaal. De cover van het boek is trouwens een prachtige foto van haar.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tomorrow Perhaps the Future has an ambitious goal, trying to show how a variety of different women experienced the Spanish Civil War. In trying to do this, it tries to do too much, making much of the book hard to follow, jumping from person to person, jumping back and forth in time trying to provide background on all the people, and also incorporating a first person perspective of the author as she wrote about the research she was doing. This often changed paragraph to paragraph, jumping me from Gerda Taro on the frontlines, to Nancy Cunard and her fascination with Black people, to Virginia Woolf, to Salaria Kea and the discrimination she faced. So many people from Europe and the United States poured into Spain when the war started to support the Republic. And some truly did support it, risking their lives for the cause. After reading this however, it feels like there were a lot of people that showed up to be war tourists, or at the very least engaged in a minimal amount of danger to be a voice of war causes. I didn’t feel like I got a consistent timeline of events from when the war broke out until the Republic fell. And with as much as many of the people in this book seemed to wander in and out of the country as visas permitted, I never felt like I got to see fully the atrocities that happened, just glimpses as someone happened to be somewhere something eventful happened. Not every person in the book survived the war, but it convinces me that what I would really like to see is a book about Salaria Kea’s time serving as a nurse of color. Or how Martha Gellhorn’s experience reporting on this war impacted the rest of her writing career. This book is just too much of a grab bag of information to be as impactful and informative as I would like. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[LaShanda Chamberlain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book with just a basic understanding of the Spanish Civil War and was deeply impressed by how thorough and insightful it is. The book focuses on the remarkable women involved in the conflict, highlighting their strong commitment to democracy. Watling’s engaging, feminist approach celebrates their bravery and explains why their fight against fascism is still important today. This inspiring and thought-provoking book is a must-read for anyone interested in history and social justice. It greatly expanded my knowledge of the Spanish Civil War and was a truly satisfying read.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never thought I’d be so riveted by a book about the Spanish Civil War! Loved!

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this rather confusing. All the jumps between the women and the timeline of the war make the whole book hard to process. If you want to know more about the Spanish Civil War, this is not the right pick.

The different experiences of the “outsiders” of the war are explained well enough, but you don’t really get a sense of who they really were. Most of them were writers, and yet the author missed the opportunity to use their own work more.

For instance, I would have loved to read the articles that Nancy Cunard and Martha Gellhorn (among others) wrote to raise the profile of the war. And to learn from their own records instead of through the author.

Gerda Taro’s testimony is the one I enjoyed the most, precisely because some of her photographs are featured in the book.

[Meg Parrott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Watling’s narrative voice was engrossing at times and others, rather placid. A wonderful topic for a book, but the execution of which at times, felt like the net had been cast too wide - subject matter felt quite random, detail sometimes felt awry, people and themes mentioned for reasons that felt unclear.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot is packed into this small package. Ms Watling states: “I wanted to know what it meant to take a side and how it had been done, and I wanted to know what writing had to do with it.” I was fortunate to hear Ms Watling speak twice at Adelaide's Writers Week event as part of the Adelaide Festival, one on her own and once on a panel with Anna Funder. Ms Watling wanted to discover what drove people to Spain in the 1930's, and to especially focus on the women, many of whom were written out of the history. When the Republican government in Spain came under attack by military forces that were eventually led by Franco it was a coup. The reactionary forces were stunned that they weren't at first successful and thus reached out to Germany and Italy for military support which was given, despite a non-intervention pact signed on by all the European countries at the League of Nations. Tens of thousands of volunteers came from around the world to support the elected government with the belief that there was a need to stop fascism before it spreads through the remainder of Europe. Many of these were refugees from Germany, Italy, Austria - those forced to flee from fascist persecution, to many in Britain and the US who felt a stand needed to be made. And so we read the stories of well known writers such as Martha Gelhorn, Virgina Woolf and Nancy Cunard, but we also hear the voices of lesser known such as Nan Green, Gerda Taro, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Jessica Mitford. For Nan Green in the mid 1930's 'liberal democracy was showing its age and failing its people.' For Nancy Cunard it was a matter of protecting self-expression and the arts, as she witnessed first hand what was happening to artists in Italy and Germany. Martha Gellhorn was a rookie reporter when she arrived in Spain. She was fearless and went were she thought the story was, sometimes with Mr Hemingway, many times without. In this book, we are reminded that it was in Spain where the fascist forces became the first to actually target the civilian population with blanket bombing of apartment blocks and hospitals, firing upon fleeing refugees, even killing children or forcing children to watch their parents being shot. All the writers reported what they witnessed and hard to argue vociferously that yes that is what happened, sometimes to no avail when editors shelved their stories. Many argued with their governments in London and DC to take a more interventionist approach to stop fascism in its track, yet those governments ignored the reports from the journalists on the ground including the photographic evidence of Italian and German troops and planes in Spain fighting along side Franco's forces. Many of the iconic images of the Spanish Civil War were taken by Gerda Taro (birth name Gerta Pohorylle). Many of those photographs were attributed to Robert Capa (birth name Andre Friedmann) because the photo agency in France they sent their film didn't believe a women could take such pictures. Much to his credit Mr Capa eventually corrected the mistake. I was especially intrigued to read the sections about Salaria Kea, a black nurse who grew up in Akron Ohio, and mostly practiced in New York city. She went to Spain because of the freedom it would give her to work to her full potential, whereas in the US in those years, even in a place like NY, she was often relegated to service work below her qualifications. This whole period was a turning point in world affairs. If the US and Britain had done more to stop Franco, then it could have put a stop to the fascist alignment taking the whole world into war. In 1942, just after the US entered the war in Europe and the Pacific, Martha Gellhorn wrote: "If you have no part in the world, no matter how diseased the work is, you are dead. It is not enough to earn your living, do no actual harm to anyone, tell no lies....It is not enough." In the Epilogue the author notes that just as in the 1930's the world is again a very dangerous place: "Equality, democracy and peace seemed no less embattled in Europe and the US... There were fresh and devastating assaults on woeen's rights in America. Racism, sexism and climate change had prompted new eruptions of protest, calling progress further into questios, while government in my own country (UK) was seeking new means for restricting the right to stage peaceful demonstrations."

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

People cared. It was a decade when people believed in the possibility of their own powers.
Josephine Herbst quoted in Tomorrow Perhaps the Future

In her introduction, Sarah Watling explains that “This is a book about individuals—outsiders—and how they understood their role in the history of humanity.” Tomorrow Perhaps the Future is a personal book more than a history or set of biographical portraits. It is Watling’s struggle to understand a “cluster of people,” women who understood what was at stake in the Spanish Civil War, and who were driven to become involved in the battle against fascism. And, it is about Watling considering the responsibility of activism, in the past and its implications for the future.

The women she writes about include the familiar and the famous, and women most of us have never heard of. Some were writers or photographers whose stories and photographs appeared in newspapers and magazines in the United States. One was a black nurse from Harlem. They were all outsiders, women who could speak the truth because of their unique perspective.

Through these women’s eyes we see the heroism of the Republican army, how people carried on in the midst of endless barrage and destruction. You understand the risks these women took to be at the front, embedded with the army or refugees, their personal losses.

And you understand the importance of this war, and the consequences of nations’ uninvolvement. For the Spanish Civil War was a trial run against the march of fascism across Europe, and soon after it’s end, Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.

Spain had democratically elected a Republican government, a coalition of left-wing groups. The right wing Nationalists, supported by the church and the military, tried to take over, and when they failed, they went to war with the Republicans. The Nationalists were supported by fascist Italy and Germany while the Soviet Union supported the Republicans. The country was divided, geographically and politically.

The war was pure chaos, with shifting fronts. It was a war that did not spare civilians; Picasso’s Guernica immortalized the destruction of a small village, filled with women and children as the men were all fighting in the war. The Nationalists asked the German and Italian fascists to bomb it.

As these women lost loved ones, I sorrowed with them. As they witnessed the hundred of thousands of refugees trudging to the closed borders, starving and without shelter or food or water, I was appalled. Concentration camps were created to house the refugees, with no protection, food, clean water, sanitation or medical help.

“I wanted to know what it meant to take a side and how it had been done, and I wanted to know what writing had to do with it.”
from Tomorrow Perhaps the Future by Sarah Watling

I learned so much about this war and these women. I was particularly intrigued by Salaria Kea who was a nurse, and Gerda Taro, who with her partner Robert Capa was a photographer, and who lost her life in the war.

Thanks to A. A. Knopf for a free book.

[R · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fans of Saidiya Hartman, Tomorrow Perhaps the Future takes a similar approach to the Spanish Civil War by tracing the lives and art of a series of notable intellectuals, creatives, refugees, and society women turned political radicals. While never advertising itself as a women's history text (something I really enjoyed--anyway, the title 'writers and outsiders' should be seen as genderless!), the majority of individuals the book tracks are women, who defied parents, structural racism, poverty, diplomatic warnings, and social pressure to arrive in Spain and to fight in their own ways against fascism.

As a historian, I found really touching and interesting Watling's commentary along the way on her archival process, access and availability of materials, and the pursuit of the 'truth'. She notes how some figures, by virtue of their position and impact, left far more behind with which to know them through. Nancy Cunard and Martha Gellhorn, the book's most oft-refered figures, make that point clear. Other figures are elusive and their stories are muddled: the sections seeking Salaria Kea raise as many questions as they attempt to provide answers. Gerda Taro is also noted to have left almost no writing behind; much of her story is told through recollections of those who knew her. Additionally, Watling takes careful time in problematizing some of the figures she studies here, while also emphasizing their vulnerability. No one is fully discredited, even for perhaps cringey or even offensive behavior (even Unity and Diana Mitford don't come across as monsters). The attention to these struggles in writing a historical text provides nuance to the book which make it feel exceptionally human.

The text is superb and detailed to the point of being capivating, never treading into the realm of tedium. I personally would have liked to see Virginia Woolf's perspective further critiqued than it already was (she notes Susan Sontag's response to Woolf, but it could be pushed farther--Woolf reads throughout this text as someone who cannot read the room, which, yeah, she couldn't. At least it was one's own, though.) I also could have done with one or two fewer references to how thin Nancy Cunard was. But this book was really moving to me and I will definitely recommend it to others seeking to understand how art can and should relate to political upheaval.

[Mark Latchford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Spanish Civil War has been written about so extensively it always surprises when a new book appears as you wonder what more could be unearthed. However much to my surprise I found this book with its focus on women who signed up to help the Republican cause rather seductive. They include well-known characters like Nancy Cunard, Martha Gilhorn and Virginia Woolf but also many I knew little or nothing about including the extraordinary but tragic Gerda Taro and others from both sides of the Atlantic
To be frank I didn’t set out to find this book. I bumped onto the author selling it at the Imperial War Museum while visiting London so jumped at the chance of a signed copy.
The way it is constructed is most unusual and at times annoying as the author jumps across the scores of characters randomly and at ad hoc points of time. She also adds significant first person reflections about her research and her subjects which disrupts the cadence somewhat
The book is written with a sympathetic tone and exclusively focuses on those who supported the left-wing Republican side of the civil war. I would have liked to heard a little about those who may have supported the Franco-led nationalists even if few and far between from abroad.
I put the book down have learnt about quite a lot about some inspirational women but also about some pretentious ones who seemed to revel in war tourism. Enjoyed it

[Jantine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is interesting and what kept me reading. But I couldn't help but feel the execution could have been better. The structure seemed muddled, the connections between the celebrities mentioned at times seemed contrived, and many of their conclusions about the war were paraphrased by the author, which sometimes gave it the air of conjecture. For a book about writers I was surprised at the lack of quotations from their actual writings about the war, which was what I had expected and which would have lent this book more authority. The author's intimate way of speaking about her subjects feels a little inappropriate for a non-fiction book about this topic; she also tends to include biographical details and context that seem out of place and slow down the pace. It could have been a better book if it were thinner and had a sharper focus, because for all its shortcomings it provides an interesting thesis on the usefulness of art and journalism in times of war. It is most convincing when describing the connections the writers mentioned felt between themselves and Spain and the Spanish. It's clear that this book was a passion project, but, like the author herself says about Martha Gellhorn, most non-fiction writing becomes better when the writer's emotional connection to the topic isn't quite so obvious on every page.

[AnnieM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tomorrow Perhaps the Future shines a light on the women and others who came from America and the UK to participate in the Spanish Civil War (Abraham Lincoln Brigades). This book is a great companion piece to the Adam Hochschild book "Spain in our Hearts: Americans in the Civil War 1936-1939" which I read in the past few years. Hochschild's book lays the foundation of what was led up to Franco coming into power and how people like George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway played roles in this fight against fascism. What I like about Watling's book is she brings a feminist perspective by shining a spotlight on women artists (writers, photographers, journalists, etc.) who did incredible acts of bravery and have not been recognized or given credit due to being overshadowed by famous men such as Ernest Hemingway and Robert Capa. I also learned about Langston Hughes' contribution to the resistance which I had not known about. This was a great read and helps fill in the gaps of the history of resistance during the Franco regime.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sketches of people, mostly women. I'm left wanting to read other books about them and about the Spanish Civil War. I wish the publisher had paid for more photo rights, because of all the paragraphs describing photos that aren't in the book. This is a 2.5 rounded up to 3.0, but a few things will stay with me--
--the comparison b/w the Spanish Civil War and the Siege of Troy for how much has been written on behalf of the side that lost the war,
--Nancy Cunard making everyone, Black and white, uncomfortable in her noisy, clumsy efforts to be an anti-racist, and then her haranguing of British writers and intellectuals into taking a public stand on the Spanish Civil War,
--it took a woman war correspondent to see the rage that Spanish women felt as they tried to survive,
--every time Ernest Hemingway shows up in a book, I'm left wondering why he's practically beatified in the US, b/c he's such an insecure, misogynist blowhard,
--thousands of photographs were assumed lost in the chaos of Spain's civil war and then Vichy France's collaboration with the Nazis, but in 2007 they turned up in a suitcase in Mexico.

[Riet · Rating 3 out of 5]

De schrijfster wil laten zien hoeveel min of meer beroemde schrijfsters en journalisten zich druk maakten om de Spaanse Burgeroorlog en er vaak ook zelf naar toe trokken. Toch, als je al meer over deze oorlog gelezen hebt, is het geheel onbevredigend. Die oorlog was natuurlijk vreselijk, maar uit dit boek krijg je meer de indruk, dat deze vrouwen er eigenlijk vooral in de weg liepen. Toch is het wel weer een heel leesbaar boek, alleen is er geen conclusie uit te trekken. Heeft soms veel weg van "names dropping", al die namen: Nancy Cunard, Jessica Mitford, Virginia Woolf, Martha Gelrich om er een paar te noemen. Het meest effectief was nog de afro-amerikaanse verpleegster, Salaria Kea, waarvan ik nog nooit had gehoord. Geen onaardig boek, maar als je echt wat van de Spaanse Burgeroorlog wil weten, moet je andere boeken lezen.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd, mixed bag of a book. Watling recounts the experiences of multiple English and American women who got involved in the Spanish Civil War as nurses, journalists, photographers or polemicists. The war had an international side: left-wingers everywhere saw the battle between an elected left-wing government and fascist revolutionaries as a chance to fight the rise of fascism; Italy and Germany saw it as a chance to strengthen fascism's reach; democratic governments stayed out of it rather than side with the left. Watling's approach drives that home but writing about the war through the eyes of outsiders gives that part of the history a patchy, awkward quality (they weren't at Guernica so it's only mentioned in passing). It's interesting even so.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book, mini-biographies of some of the most important foreign, often female, characters in the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Poets, writers, activists, journalists, some even participants. As with most of history, women are often marginalised and Ms Watling does her best to bring as much information as possible from her research.
It isn't a very happy book, people either die or end up old, bitter and confused, I suppose that's the same for everyone, the world over.
At the end of the book she mentions the Mexican Suitcase exhibition showing photos by Taro (and Shim and Capa) that I saw I think in Malaga a few years ago without knowing her history.
It took a long time to read, as my heart was broken many times and I had to pause, but very worth it

[Elaine Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing parallels

This book is a well written and researched account of the people who reported on the Spanish civil war. There is a seemingly never ending war between democracy and authoritarian regimes. The present day wars and governmental changes around the world point to rather ominous similarities. Human rights are being whittled away, more people seem attracted to authoritarian political leaders. They don't seem to know what is at stake and give no indication that they care. Current events point more to a return to a darker age. Fasten your seatbelts, folks. Sothere.

[Sonieak · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Un pequeño trozo de acero retorcido, caliente y muy filoso, surge de la bomba; alcanza al niño pequeño en la garganta. La mujer mayor se queda quieta, cogiéndole la mano al niño muerto, mirándolo estúpidamente, sin decir nada, y unos hombres corren hacia ella para cargar al niño. A su izquierda, a un lado de la plaza, hay un cartel enorme y brillante que dice: SALID DE MADRID"

"[...] la única manera en la que puedo devolver lo que el destino y la sociedad me han dado es intentar, de una forma modesta y completamente inútil, emitir un sonido enfadado contra la injusticia"

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, another Spanish Civil War book - outstanding I thought. Focused on the female journalists who covered the Civil War, often at great risk. They were drawn to this conflict, sympathizing with the Republic, the elected government. These women were from the US or England, some wealthy, some not. Fascinating and well written.

[Lynn]

Odd piece of history. Privileged folks, famous and not so famous, all leading interesting lives, facing personal issues and compelled to weigh in on Spain's civil war.

The bigger picture of civil wars, parallels to current struggles in divided societies, and the real possibility of fascism in today's world make this a difficult read p.

.

[Alma · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Hay algo especialmente conmovedor en una voz, sobre todo cuando en la grabación no hay imágenes que distraigan la atención. Es solo el sonido, inmediato e incorpóreo: la conciencia de una persona comunicándose de forma directa con la tuya. La emoción perdura, espera su oportunidad. Se parece mucho a escuchar a escondidas, como desde detrás de la puerta de los muertos.»

[Paul Narvaez · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

I read all I can about the Spanish Civil War and this book took a different tack, focusing on the visiting foreign women writers, photographers and journalists who covered it throughout the 30's. It was a past I didn't know too well so I enjoyed learning about it.

[Mark Hussey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timely book, given rising fascism. Moving, perceptive, and an original gathering of subjects.

[Yasmien · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,75

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have any interest in the conflict that was to become World War II, this book should be on your to be read shelf. Please read the reviews published here for a good description of the various parts of this expansive treatise on the women journalists who went headlong into Spain to cover and sometimes actually fight the fascists that eventually took over the country and held it for nearly 40 years.

Besides the noted personalities covered such as Sarah Warner Townsend, Martha Gellhorn, Gerda Taro, Virginia Woolf, I was intrigued by the person of Virginia Cowles, the American journalist and travel writer who turned her intentions to the conflict Watling mentions early on in the book that she was born in Vermont. Little did I know that she was born in the Vermont town that I have called home now for the past 45 years...Brattleboro.

Her profile should be added to the Brattleboro Words Project, a map and related podcasts of those authors who were born or lived in the Brattleboro area. https://brattleborowords.org/

Now I am intrigued to read more about her, and her memoir Looking for Trouble, Harper, (1941) ; reissued by Faber, (2021). It is waiting for me at the Brooks Memorial Library.