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  • Rosa of the Wild Grass: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family by Fiona MacIntosh
  • Yoly Zentella
MacIntosh, Fiona. Rosa of the Wild Grass: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family. Shropshire, UK: Practical Action Publishing, 2016.

There is yin and yang in historical writing. Official histories are usually written by the victors, while grassroots histories telling the story of the subaltern are most often written by the defiant victim. The need for grassroots narratives lies in the idea that if they are not written, the masses will remain voiceless and invisible, which would be a tragedy, since to know an individual's story is to taste life from the bottom up and across political eras. One reason that autobiographies and memoirs such as the Autobiography of Malcolm X and I, Rigoberta Menchu enjoy such immense popularity is that they tell the stories of how the narrator became politicized and what his or her hopes, dreams, and fears were. Another reason is that the experiences of subalterns mirror what many may have contemplated or experienced in some form. The images in the mirror serve as food for thought and encourage activism and expressions of solidarity.

Rosa of the Wild Grass: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family is a grassroots history of Nicaragua told through the eyes of three generations of mujeres Nicaraguenses (Nicaraguan women). Their experiences of joy, disappointment, and growth are told across a span of time that included the dictatorship of the Somoza family and the Sandinista Revolution. The personal and political challenges of these times were topics of conversation between the author and Rosa, Rosa's daughter Angelica, Rosa's mother Maria, and various other members of Rosa's family. These conversations spanned three decades, from the early 1980s to 2013.

Written in a documentary-1 ike and very readable style, Rosa of the Wild Grass will appeal to a broad audience that includes high school and college students, readers interested in the history of Central America and gender issues, and researchers searching for first-person data. In seven chapters embellished with beautiful, sometimes haunting black-and-white illustrations by the author, Macintosh interweaves Rosa's personal life with political events that shape and transform Rosa over decades. As the chapters progress, Rosa is a woman experiencing and coping with machismo, sexism, love, children, family conflict, and domestic work. She observes the changing times as she becomes a woman of the revolution and organizes community development initiatives in the barrios, such as community kitchens to feed those in need, planting medicinal herb [End Page 191] gardens, and holding women's health workshops. As a woman who is organizing and mobilizing la gente (the people), Rosa's influence spreads rapidly.

Born in Scotland and currently living in London, MacIntosh, a writer and graphic designer, had the political awareness necessary to understand the course of events in Nicaragua and the background and skill to transform her conversations with Rosa and her family into a book. In the 1970s, MacIntosh was involved in human rights work with refugees from Latin America who were fleeing U.S.-supported military regimes. In 1981, two years after the Sandinista Revolution, MacIntosh traveled to Nicaragua, where she found a people hard at work at reconstruction. Motivated to take part in this revolution, her graphic skills were put to good use designing educational materials for grassroots political organizations. Rosa worked at a print shop that MacIntosh frequented, and it was there that they met and became friends in 1982. For the next three decades, MacIntosh recorded the story of Rosa and her mother and other family members.

Rosa of the Wild Grass: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family presents a human face of the story of Nicaragua from the time of Somoza, through an agonizing revolution and time of government repression when so many died, to the accusations of collusion with capitalism levied at Daniel Ortega, the once-revered and -respected leader of the revolution, and his wife, Rosario. In the last chapter, "The Harvest," Rosa muses on the concept of the Sandinistas and their evolution from the principles of equality, justice, and the collective to a more self-serving path. Rosa of the Wild...

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