Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel
Following visits to Rwanda in 2006 on behalf of Women for Women International, Walker was nearly overcome with the aftermath of the genocidal violence, particularly aimed at women and children. On behalf of the antiwar group Code Pink, she traveled to the Gaza Strip in 2009 to witness the suffering caused by the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In this slim volume, she tells the stories of women and children brutalized by war. She recalls visiting villages reduced to rubble, listening to women mourn the death of their children, sharing modest meals, and sharing stories of her own struggles growing up in the South, the U.S. civil rights movement, and learning the importance of connections to friends and family. She links modern-day atrocities to older cruelties, including the Holocaust and the Trail of Tears. Finding resilience in the midst of atrocities, Walker uses her own voice, as poet and activist, to speak out against injustices in the world’s trouble spots. --Vanessa Bush