American War Stories in the 21st Century
Overview
- Prof. Dr. Katharina Gerund (FS 2025)
- Recap: Military Spouses as Happy Home Front Heroines
- Military Spouse Authors: Waiting & Writing
- The Immortals: Waiting as Transformative Experience
- “You Know When the Men Are Gone:” Waiting as Moral Duty
- “Ithaca:” Waiting as Heroic Act
Military Spouses in Post-9/11 Culture
- Surprise family reunion at the State of the Union 2020: Military spouse Amy Williams and her family.
Happy Home Front Heroine
- Examples:
- Army Wives (Lifetime, 2007-2013): advertisements for seasons 3 & 7
- Military Spouse magazine (2004-): July 2010 & July 2015 issues
“Happy Housewife Heroine”
- "In the second half of the twentieth century in America, woman’s world was confined to her own body and beauty, the charming of man, the bearing of babies, and the physical care and serving of husband, children, and home" (83).
- For these new male protagonists, “the value of home, relationships, and diversity has gradually become a given” and “[t]he conflict […] is no longer just between the hero and his adversaries, but more often about negotiating the proper balance between home and duty. Duty still holds an important place in the hero’s life, but he remains ever aware that refusing to be heroic can likewise be damaging to his family.” (34)
Waiting & Writing
- Examples of books written by military spouses:
- Beyond Afghanistan: More Views of a Military Spouse by A. Piper Burgi
- My Afghanistan Campaign Diary by Sarah Smiley
- From Military Roots to Dragon Wings: The Rebecca Yarros Story by Maria P. Walker
- “[W]ar was in their backyards, on their desks, in their kitchens, and sitting in their living rooms.” (112)
- “[T]he people around her [suddenly] weren’t Army wives so much as women taking the same route through marriage and parenthood that she was.” (93)
- “[…] that, more often than not, the toughest fight in the war was for those back home, who had a million questions and heard only partial truth.” (124)
- “[…] the job of the spouse at home is more difficult tha[n] the job we have here.” (209)
- She “felt an awakening.” (108)
- She “wanted to make a contribution to the world – as a woman, for other women” (119), esp. for “the wives and mothers who stayed behind craving the moment their soldiers stepped of the plane, back on US soil.” (215)
- “Writing music quieted the annoying tone of war.” (214-15)
- “[S]he’d abandoned the girl who gave up, the woman in the shadow, the intimidated wife. […] Her marriage to Luke had been the time and space that she needed to figure out who she was. She’d surprised herself in the last nine months. Ambition held Calli in the crook of her arm and carried her to a new land where she felt equal to Luke, a land where, in addition to being a wife, mother, and friend, she was Calliope Wendover Coleman. No more. No less.” (255)
“You Know When the Men Are Gone”: Waiting as Moral Duty
- She turned to descend the stair, her heart in tumult. Had she better keep her distance and question him, her husband? Should she run up to him, take his hands, kiss him now?
- … And she, for a long time, sat deathly still in wonderment – for sometimes as she gazed she found him – yes, clearly – like her husband, but sometimes blood and rags were all she saw. (n. pag.)
- “[…] without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.” (1)
- “[…] interminable waiting, waiting, waiting for her life to continue – such a long, gray nothingness between departure and return, huge chunks of existence she filled up and pushed through as if it were a task rather than a stretch of her young life […]” (31)
- Natalya “didn’t bake or make posters, and she never offered to wash a car. She didn’t take her children to any of the parks on post. She shopped at the commissary and filled her cart with odd foods […], never anything nutritious enough to feed a pair of three-year olds. She went out a few nights a week, dressed to cause a scandal […]” (18, emphases mine)
- Natalya’s husband had “been married […] but quickly divorced the wife who waited patiently for him at home.” (11)
- Meg “wondered why Natalya could not have waited just a little bit longer for her husband to come home.” (30)
- “Natalya had escaped one war and found herself caught in the wake of another; perhaps she realized she could survive without her children but she couldn’t take the waiting anymore.” (35)
- Jeremy “just stared at Meg as if she were the anchor that held his life. And Meg did not hesitate. She […] took a step toward him, knowing suddenly and without a doubt that he was, and always would be, worth the wait.” (35)
