The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War
Posted by Dreamer
A fascinating memoir from poet and former Sandinista revolutionary Gioconda Belli, The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War is an eminently human portrait of an idealistic but imperfect woman who sought to free her country – Nicaragua – from a dictatorship, build a more just society, and stay true to herself – whether in love or in the midst of revolutionary politics.
The Country Under My Skin is a book that successfully combines the personal and political contradictions of an extraordinary life.
In it Gioconda Belli recounts her story as a wife, a mother, a lover, a poet, an intellectual, a revolutionary, a government official, and a woman in love with her country and, ultimately, an American man. She grew up in a privileged Nicaraguan environment, yet she fervently believed in the revolutionary Sandinista movement that would belie her class privileges but, ironically, also catapult her to power that she then later renounced. For this movement she risked her life and was forced into exile to Mexico and Costa Rica; she then jubilantly witnessed the movement’s triumph and participated in the difficulties of instituting a new government and a new society.
You cannot help but be struck by her sense of adventure and history in this book. Belli gleefully describes her work in the underground movement and in the new government. Yet while she builds support, smuggles equipment, encounters personalities like Fidel Castro, Omar Torrijos, and Vo Nguyen Giap, and witnesses both the realization and the betrayal of her political principles, the disorganized sense of history is overwhelming – episodes that lay the groundwork for the abuses of power and the political failures of the FSLN.
An explosive mix of personal and political scenes, The Country Under My Skin is an enthralling read.
(Reviewer’s note: This is a review of the Spanish version, El País Bajo Mi Piel: Memorias de Amor y Guerra.)
English version:
The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War by Gioconda Belli. New York: Anchor, 2003. 400 pages.
Buy the book in Europe 
Spanish version:
El País Bajo Mi Piel: Memorias de Amor y Guerra by Gioconda Belli. New York: Vintage, 2003. 448 pages.
Buy the book in Europe
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