Postconflict Interventions in Women’s Writing

This volume foregrounds the responses of women writers to the policies and debates involved in reconciliation, expanding our understanding of postconflict literature. In a world grappling with toxic histories and the legacies of old conflicts, truth commissions, apologies and other transitional justice mechanisms are mobilised for the daunting task of rebuilding fractured societies and healing deep-seated wounds. While attention has been drawn, on the one hand, to the need to acknowledge the role of women as actors in peacebuilding and reconciliation processes and, on the other, to the alternative spaces of justice offered by the arts, research that addresses the link between women’s writing and conflict transformation remains yet to be done. Postconflict Interventions in Women’s Writing: Crafting Reconciliatory Spaces explores this confluence through case studies as diverse as South Africa, Canada, Australia, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Palestine/Israel, and Chile. The volume presents illuminating ways of considering reconciliation in an unreconciled world from the perspectives of contemporary women authors and through a wide range of literary genres.