Casemate Publishers - 2011
192 pages
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| photo original location |
Jess Goodell was a Marine who, in 2004, volunteered for a tour position in Iraq. Having little idea what she would be doing there, the book highlights her time in Iraq working in Mortuary Affairs, concerning the retrieval and documentation of deceased service personal during the war. The title, Shade It Black, refers to the process of what her and her fellow Marines would do to a generic diagram of a soldier after death if there were missing body parts while processing the deceased.
I'd struggle to adequately fit this book into one category. I found my copy of the book located under the history section, but as much as a book about war (and in this case a lesser looked at subset of war involving mortuary affairs), this is also the memoir of a Marine (a female Marine) and her life in the marines and her struggles once she leaves Iraq and enters a crash-course of civilian life. The book could possibly be seen as feminist in chronicling the issues the author and presumably other Marines who just happen to be female.
Despite the subject matter, I didn't find this book as uncomfortably squeamish as I thought it could be (it's a book about someone working in mortuary affairs in a war-zone...there will be death.) The book is eye-opening, written well, and highly informative. I will be very surprised if this book is not on my end of the year best list.
If you are interested in the book, I'd suggest listening to Jess Goodell's 2011 interview with NPR's Fresh Air located here.
Rating: 4.5 of 5. Highly recommended.
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5 comments:
I listened to the NPR interview, and after the emotions that went through me during it, I knew that I didn't have enough left to read the book. However, I'm glad that the writer decided to tell her story. Maybe her story can bring solace to the families of the soldiers who died--and remind the rest of us of the terrible cost of war.
Thanks! Yeah, the interview, I thought, was a lot harder to listen to than the book was to read, possibly because you could hear the still emotion in her voice in the radio interview.
It's still worth reading. I wish her and all of her friends and follow soldiers the best. The book does touch, later on, with the psychological issues and struggle to get back into civilian life, which I don't think were mentioned that much in the interview.
Is it any wonder that PTSD is on the rise? War is hell, people. I want to read this book but at the same time, I don't want to read this book. guess I will need to listen to the interview first.
@ Mark: Yes, and that still seems to sadly be something that people think you don't really need help with if your a soldier. :(
Interesting subject - not sure I could read this though.
Ann
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