Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War in Reader with a Cause

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Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War

Leymah Gbowee,

Carol Mithers

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Nov 12, 2014 Sam Diener rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, history, anti-war-movement, social-movements

This book is extraordinary because , the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Liberian civil war through mass women's protests, survived atrocities and found courageous, creative ways of transforming her and her community's pain into determined strategically effective organizing to end the violence.

Among many other things, she's a war refugee who was nearly starved to death (more than once), a single mother whose kids nearly starved as well, a woman who was batter This book is extraordinary because , the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Liberian civil war through mass women's protests, survived atrocities and found courageous, creative ways of transforming her and her community's pain into determined strategically effective organizing to end the violence.

Among many other things, she's a war refugee who was nearly starved to death (more than once), a single mother whose kids nearly starved as well, a woman who was battered by a man who finally found a way, in the midst of war, to escape this form of men's violence as well, a woman who found her way back from PTSD-induced depression, and an alcoholic who claims to have quit cold turkey after hitting bottom. As a social worker in training, she found herself trying to devise workshops to help Liberians, especially women, deal with the traumas of war. As atrocities mounted, she was determined not merely to try to heal traumas after they were committed, but organize the survivors to work to stop the violence. Astonishingly, her grassroots mobilizations of women helped bring an end to the horrific civil war. And she has continued to dedicate herself to the perhaps even harder task of rebuilding societies, and preventing wars, across the continent.

She's quite clear that the kind of dedication, time, and passion she devoted to the movement was also made possible by her parents and sister, who, at various times, agreed to become the primary caretakers for her children.

Don't go to this book for analyses of the politics of the Liberian civil war. One can find other sources for those kinds of analyses. I get the sense that she deliberately edited these politics out, because the focus of the women in white movement was for all sides to stop the killing, stop the raping, stop the maiming, stop the fighting, and end the war. And one of the real achievements of the movement was to unite women across class, religious, and urban/rural lines, though she does describe some tensions along these lines.

Unlike many reviewers here on 欧宝娱乐, I wanted to learn more about the internal politics of the movement, not less. What were some of the difficult decision points, who was involved in discussing the options, and how were the decisions made? You'll get little of that kind of analysis here. Gbowee, quite bravely, shares with us some of the critiques of her leadership style by her colleagues, but she's so shocked by these unexpectedly harsh criticisms that she didn't really analyze them in any depth.

Finally, although she discusses the importance of the concept of restorative justice to her (in particular the work of Hizkias Assefa () and vital insights into the theory of strategic peacebuilding (especially the work of John Paul Lederach, see ), I would have been fascinated to hear more of her take on the peace studies theories she finally got a chance to study at Eastern Mennonite University. Did they offer insights to her as she reflected on her practice? What did these frameworks leave out and what might she add to or change about them? She doesn't really say. Maybe that's for another book. I look forward to reading it, if she was willing to write it.

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