TOMORROW PERHAPS THE FUTURE

Historical study of a period during which fascism and oppression inspired women to act.

Drawing on poems, memoirs, stories, and essays, Watling, author of The Olivier Sisters, examines women artists, writers, and activists for whom the Spanish Civil War, which began in July 1936, was “a provocation that demanded an answer.” Her subjects include war correspondent and travel writer Martha Gellhorn, who became the third wife of Ernest Hemingway; American writer and journalist Josephine Herbst; British novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner and her lover, poet Valentine Ackland; writers Nancy Cunard and Virginia Woolf; Jewish photographer Gerda Taro, a refugee from Nazi Germany; British communist Nan Green, who joined her husband after he became an ambulance driver for the Republic; and African American nurse and desegregation activist Salaria Kea. Most of the women saw going to Spain “as a gesture of solidarity,” a way to bear witness to fascist oppression. Some were able to publicize the conflict in major venues, such as the New Yorker, Manchester Guardian, and Collier’s. A few, notably Green and Kea, worked alongside Spanish soldiers on the ground. Others spoke out in lectures and at congresses; they traveled back and forth to Spain, reporting on the valiant efforts of the Republicans. Woolf came late to responding at all, fearful that allowing politics to seep into her work would impede her creativity. Yet as much as these women believed their work could offer a morale boost to the Spanish fighters, some worried that they walked a fine line between solidarity and appropriation. As she traces the women’s various responses to the rise of fascism and their frustration over their home countries’ political positions, Watling recounts the progress of the brutal war and the women’s growing conviction that inaction was not an option. Unfortunately, her decision to refer to these women—and less consistently to the men they were involved with—by their first names gives her serious, thoughtful narrative a gossipy tone.

A well-informed group biography of bold activists.