An easy-to-read, engaging primer on Nicaragua in the 70s and 80s

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	• The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War Gioconda Belli Anchor, 2003 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This Book Touched Me In So Many Ways

It's hard to know how to start writing about Gioconda Belli's autobiography, The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War, since it reached and touched me in so many ways.

This is the story of a woman, a mother, a revolutionary fighter, now living in Santa Monica, who used to wear a machine gun as a part of her JOB!

To read the life story of a contemporary, of my generation, who has done so much, lived with such vivacity and courage and passion is truly an inspiration. To see the USA through the eyes of someone who fought against a cruel, murderous, ugly dictator, only to have a right wing American president, Ronald Reagan, use all the power within his reach to destroy the fruits of her people's struggle for democracy-- is eye-opening.

Gioconda Belli weaves a story of intrigue, power, politics and sensuality that had me turning the pages like, usually, only the best potboiler fiction novel can do. It is a testimony to women's rights the way she functioned as a Sandinista revolutionary while bearing three children, raising a family and taking down the Somoza dictatorship, becoming an award winning writer-poet and traveling the world as a diplomat-representative of the revolutionary government she played a major role of bringing into power.

As an activist writer, publisher in the USA, (of the website opednews) this book came to me as an amazing wake-up call, demonstrating the many ways a people who are fighting a corrupt, malignant government and its leaders can tackle the challenge of taking control of the nation.

We in the USA who are fighting against those who are unraveling the constitution and democracy would do well to read and learn from Gioconda Belli. The steps she took as she became more politicized, more involved in the fight against the rich and powerful who would strip the rights and freedoms from her people are steps many of us have just begun to take. The courage and sacrifice she describes in her own life and the lives of her "companeros" is inspiring.

Reading about her experiences meeting with other revolutionaries, how different nations actually celebrate them and their fights for freedom, was a real eye-opener. Why doesn't the US honor the heroic men and women with the courage to take on the worst dictators? Because, too often, we are supporting and funding them? This must end. It is time that we invite the leaders of revolutions from all over the world to the US. Of course, for that reality to happen, there must be a revolution of some sort in the US-- one that rejects corporatism and the run-amuck out of control capitalism that the USA's lamestream media have sold us over the years.

While this is a book, that for me, was inspiring at many levels, one should not forget that Belli is an award winning poet and writer with many international awards for her work. The book is a pleasure to read. It will make you laugh and bring you tears of joy and sadness. It did for me.

The book was not one I'd have ever picked up on my own. It was recommended to me... strongly. I pass that recommendation forward to you. Give it a try. You won't be able to put it down.

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An easy-to-read, engaging primer on Nicaragua in the 70s and 80s

In preparation for a trip to Nicaragua, I picked up this book as my introduction to the country and let me tell you: it got under my skin, too. If you are interested in getting a flavor for what Nicaragua is like and where it his been in recent history, I highly recommend The Country Under My Skin. As mentioned in other reviews, this is a story of a woman, not a nation, and that is what, for me, kept the book interesting. Whenever the love stories lingered too long, she would always give the reader a socio-political context to the public events that were so intertwined with her private life.

I am not suggesting, however, that this is anything resembling a definitive history of the Sandinista struggle. Belli's love for Nicaragua and it's poor is infectious and easily transferred through her lyrical prose. Read this book. Fall in love. You can learn more later.

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beautiful

i savored this book for months before i finally allowed myself to read the final chapters. she writes so lyrically and with such passion and imagery, yet without an abundance of superflous words. i read this while traveling through nicaragua and enjoyed every word of it.

A woman's life

Its a passionating history of a country and the impressing story of a woman's life. I like it. Its so real.

Honesty is the best quality

Our book club enjoyed the discussion on politics which this feminist autobiography evoked, but shared no empathy with the author whose justification for being a member of the Sandanistas was unconvincing, allowing her to be judged as a promiscous, star-struck, thrill seeker motivated by the desire to shock and gain attention from her family by causing scandal within the upper echelons of Nicaraguan society. Honesty is the best quality of the writing style which used a journalistic approach rather than any poetic language.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

An electrifying memoir from the acclaimed Nicaraguan writer (?A wonderfully free and original talent??Harold Pinter) and central figure in the Sandinista Revolution.

Until her early twenties, Gioconda Belli inhabited an upper-class cocoon: sheltered from the poverty in Managua in a world of country clubs and debutante balls; educated abroad; early marriage and motherhood. But in 1970, everything changed. Her growing dissatisfaction with domestic life, and a blossoming awareness of the social inequities in Nicaragua, led her to join the Sandinistas, then a burgeoning but still hidden organization. She would be involved with them over the next twenty years at the highest, and often most dangerous, levels.

Her memoir is both a revelatory insider?s account of the Revolution and a vivid, intensely felt story about coming of age under extraordinary circumstances. Belli writes with both striking lyricism and candor about her personal and political lives: about her family, her children, the men in her life; about her poetry; about the dichotomies between her birth-right and the life she chose for herself; about the failures and triumphs of the Revolution; about her current life, divided between California (with her American husband and their children) and Nicaragua; and about her sustained and sustaining passion for her country and its people.

From the Hardcover edition.

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