Email: skm9566@nyu.edu

This beautifully engaging work by Diana Taylor feels superbly timely in the face of the Palestinian genocide. I have been asking myself in recent weeks: What can we do? What can we share with the world? Does it just get lost in a sea of violence? Do the voices of our cries for help even echo in anyone’s conscience?

Before even reading the text, the picture on the first page took my breath away. It struck me that the woman is standing there, with no protection, not even in the form of clothing. Regina Jose Galindo stands, measured and steady, with a giant man made weapon digging ground beneath and around her. She is turned away from it, but that does not change her awareness to it. She knows the threat of violence is always hovering above her, even if there are moments of it not being in her view. I often think that this is how people in Palestine must have lived for the last few decades. Even when no one was watching or turning their heads towards their part of the world, they felt the threat of violence upon them, never planning for the future, must like Galindo states she feels, for she is uncertain of the future of Guatemala. (126)

One of the most compelling parts of Taylor’s text was the commentary on the sexualization of the female body systemically, through the armed forces. (117) In the gruesome description of Scenario II, the lens of sexual violence as a means to dehumanize a body before taking the life from it is exposed. Women and female bodies, even in death, are seen as something to consume, literally and figuratively. I see Galindo’s body standing there in resistance and in logical presentation, exposing all of herself to say to her oppressor, in a sense– “Here I am, what now? What more can you take?”