Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas (review)

The basic criticisms Roy levels in these three works are not new. They have been made before, in many different ways by many different authors, and often in more scholarly detail. The virtue of her writing is its unwavering focus on furnishing the reader with context not just for specific incidents but for understanding how the specific incidents shed light on the overarching mentality and operations of the neoliberal empire, of which America is the foremost proponent and exporter. She teaches by example how to look askance at the accounts that the powerful give of their actions and how to ask substantive questions with style. Despite a certain repetitiveness in the interviews, aficionados of Roy should find that these are useful collections, while new readers should find in these books a wide-ranging, eloquent, and passionate introduction to the struggle against empire.