Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq

Nineteen women all branches of the United States military lend their voices in the poetry and personal essays of this collection. They have seen conflicts from Somalia to Vietnam to Desert Shield, and many are authors and winners of writing awards and fellowships or hold MFAs from some of the country’s finest programs. Their writing exposes the frontline intersection of women and soldiering, describing from a steely-eyed female perspective the horror, the humor, the cultural clashes, and the fear that are the inevitable accompaniments of war.