Books like Priest Under Fire — picked by fans

How did a U.S. priest and nun who went to Guatemala to convert the poor to “proper” Catholicism and to fight communism join a revolutionary movement?

The married couple Thomas and Marjorie Melville explain how they shared the anti-communist views of the U.S. government and the Catholic Church but living among the poor led them to question both institutions’ roles in supporting inequality in Guatemala. At the time of the book’s publication, 1970, the two were in jail as part of the Catonsville Nine. They, along with other Catholics, broke into a Maryland draft board and poured homemade napalm on stolen files to protest U.S. imperialism, including in Vietnam, and the Catholic Church’s support for it.

What led a priest to join the Sandinista revolution?

In sharing his story, Nicaraguan Jesuit Fernando Cardenal details how his views regarding what it means to serve the poor and his understanding of sin as societal placed him on a collision course with both the government and many in the church. For a time, Cardenal was expelled from the Jesuits because he refused to resign his post in the Nicaraguan government. He also recounts what led him to later break with the Sandinista party.

What prompted an upper-class, Catholic mother to become an armed revolutionary in Nicaragua?

The poet and writer Gioconda Belli shares her journey, including her time living in exile and her later break with the Sandinistas. She details how her experiences differed from her comrades because of her status as a woman and a mother and how they often underestimated and mistreated her because of her gender. Although Belli does not center faith as her primary motivation, she often references her Catholic upbringing and schooling.

As a Latin American from a country of such diverse cultures as Mexico, I recommend this book by Rigoberta Menchú because it is the first 20th-century voice from an indigenous woman who has taken up arms in defense of her people. For me this connection also touches my family’s past, because I too, lost a brother to armed conflict, just like Rigoberta. A biography from an author that speaks so personally of this struggle stirs the pages in this book and makes this testimony overwhelmingly moving for any reader. But this deep connection with the reader also creates an international concern for justice. Menchú’s voice puts forward in book form a Maya tradition of community where the collective “we” is stressed in the testimony, as well as a history where experience is one, uniting the writer with the events that are being reported.  

In a post-apocalyptic world run by an oppressive American empire, we find Little Bird hiding in a hole. Though her mother was a great leader of the rebellion, Little Bird has found herself very lost, in a very cruel world - and she just might be the last chance that the freethinking people of the Western world have. 

I love that this story takes familiar forces and fears of our modern life and cranks them up to eleven. With that in mind, the star of the show must be Ian Bertram’s artwork. All the huge ideas and themes created by Darcy are elevated to a startling degree by the way Ian is able to build this world visually. The iconography, the violence, the characterizations, it slaps you in the face page after page.

Marwan Kraidy’s book is a deep dive into the cultural politics of the Arab Uprisings during 2011. Wonderfully written and cleverly organized this academic book looks at the ‘digital’ nature of these resistance movements and the use of art and media tools in the protests. The focus is on young Arabs who used the street to challenge authority and cutting-edge social media platforms to argue for social change. In the book political activism and a period of digital euphoria meet when places like Tahrir Square became the centre of the world. This is one of the most essential accounts of 2011 that offers a refreshing take on Facebook and Twitter as revolutionary agents that helped to bring down the military regime. 

Packer examines why the United States invaded Iraq without a just cause and without a plan for what to do once it succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein. He explains the critical first few months of the war that set the course for everything that followed in a searing examination of America’s extraordinary hubris in the “War on Terror.” What sets Packer’s work apart is his ability to explain events in the White House and Pentagon and tie them to their bitter denouement on the streets of Baghdad. He tells the story of a big war of choice gone badly wrong before the first shots were fired. 

Fragmentation is a natural tendency among humans. Collectives, groups, and organizations face centrifugal tendencies that push for division and fragmentation. Ideological movements, in particular, face this risk, as there will always be members of the group who are dissatisfied with how the collective is progressing toward achieving its goals.

Rebel movements are an excellent example, as such actors constantly fragment, divide, and evolve through years of rebellion. But what factors contribute to or prevent divisions among rebel groups from disintegrating? And not less importantly, what are the implications of fragmentation on civil wars in which the rebel movements participate?

Based on rigorous fieldwork in the Horn of Africa, with particular attention to Eritrea and Ethiopia and an additional outlook into Somalia, Woldemariam offers a convincing theory that addresses these questions by examining such factors as battlefield developments and the nature of control over territory. He does so clearly and eloquently,… show more.

You know how you go somewhere you’ve never been and you feel hollow in your bones, like you’re more fragile there, you might blow away in a strong wind or just melt down if this place doesn’t learn to recognize you?

Amatka is like that, and it’s about that. We follow someone trying to diligently do a perfectly normal market research gig in place where everyday objects must be clearly labelled and the labels reinforced constantly, otherwise they dissolve into slush.

She has to keep putting things in their place, but she’s not too good at that, because she’s always been out of place herself.

I mean, isn’t that exactly what life is like? And then it all falls apart.

I knew Saw Ralph and Naw Sheera when we were in Manerplaw, which used to be the headquarters of the Karen resistance, in Burma. As a little girl, I often followed my mother Nant Kyin Shwe to her workplace and remembered seeing Naw Sheera in the office of the Karen Women's Organisation. When I read her book, it reminds me of all the places and the people, and my beautiful childhood in, Kawthoolei, Burma.