As a contributor to a whole roster of impressive news outlets, from The Atlantic to the Washington Post, author and journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon has written about women in Afghanistan, slave markets, presidential politics, public policy… Her latest book, Ashley’s War, zeroes in on women soldiers on the special ops battlefield — who are right there alongside Navy SEALs and Army Rangers; the title takes after one of those pioneers, First Lieutenant Ashley White, who was killed during a night raid. Here, Lemmon shares their story and more.
A hero story about women who “live in the ‘and,'” who live in so many dimensions, every single day. And as much as this is a war story, it really is a story of female friendship in the least likely place.
To “live in the ‘and'” means…
So many times we don’t see women in all of their dimensions, particularly on the page and on the screen. They’re either really intense and driven or they are feminine and focused on things other than work. This was a group of women who could be very hard, very ambitious, incredibly fierce, incredibly driven and also warm, funny and feminine. You could wear body armor and wear mascara and one didn’t make you less competent for the other. These were women who are comfortable being themselves, in everything that that entails.
And Ashley White…
She wore red high heels, she loved Minnie Mouse, she had a bread maker in her office in Kandahar and would make batches of raisin bread… and then she could go to the gym and bust out 30 pull-ups from a dead hang or put 40 or 50 pounds of weight on her back and march for 10 or 11 miles.
The origins of Ashley’s War…
My first book The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is about a young woman whose business supported her family under the Taliban, so I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, I knew about combat, I knew about dying rates — but I definitely did not know that women were out there! In fact, I was hosting an event in New York and this former Marine said, “You know, it’s like the story of Ashley White and all those women who were out on night raids.” And I said, “What?!” Because this was 2012 and the combat ban was very much in place. For me, it was a question of what these women were doing out there, why they were there and how did America not know them? Those questions led to two years of reporting.
The common themes in both my books…
Resilience, strength, courage. Being underestimated by the outside world. Finding community. Serving something greater than yourself. The power of character in very difficult circumstances.
My goal in writing these books…
To make them as close to a documentary as they could be. There are very few stories that actually demand the length of a book. I wanted to really give readers the full depth, wealth, richness, texture, color, smell, sight and sound of that world. It’s like Narnia, right? I want to open the door to this world, a world readers are probably never going to see firsthand and have them leave their judgements behind and feel like they really know it in the end.
When I left news to go into the great unknown of graduate school. And then, after business school and I’m in a good groove, to leave and write a first book that it’s possible only five people will read. On paper, it makes no sense. Honestly, 98 percent of the reason why it worked out for me was because I had the example of all these women I had grown up with— my mother, my grandmother, my aunt — who faced real tests, with real risk of failure and just never gave up because they had worked so hard to make sure they wouldn’t fail. Working your backside off and leaving as little to chance as possible — that’s what informs everything I do.
When faced with a challenge…
Never get discouraged! Be OK with some failure along the way. But that doesn’t mean you don’t take the risk! The most important thing is that you get up and try again. Because, as my cousin once told me, it’s supposed to be that hard. Because if big things were easy to do, everyone would be doing them!
The TED talks I’ve done…
They’re so much about the same theme — taking risks, trusting yourself, doing something big that you know you can do and ignoring everyone else who will tell you no. Because everyone will tell you no. And then you do it, and everybody will march in and say they knew you could do it all along. I mean, that’s the truth. And I think, particularly with women, I think everyone is looking for road maps when the truth is the road map is right before them. Women don’t need a road map that other women have followed; they need to be able to tune out all the noise and trust themselves.
And my favorite inspiring TED talks to watch…
Brené Brown on listening to shame, Memory Banda on child marriage, Amy Cuddy on body language and Sebastian Junger on why veterans miss war.
Other stories I’d like to shed more light on…
Child marriage and human trafficking. I’ve worked on both of them, I’ve been heartbroken by both of them. I’m still trying to find the right way to tell the story that makes the difference for both of them. I think the topics that have always fascinated me are people who do the right thing when nobody is looking, because that’s just who they are, and reworking the victim story when it comes to women’s lives to actually reflect the reality.
What drives me…
I wish I knew! Insanity? I think what drives me is that so many women sacrificed so much for me. It was really hard for my mom to raise me on a phone company salary with minimal to no child support, and she never complained. She taught me the power of being a grown-up, of looking life in the face and cleaning up your own messes. And the fact that I inherited that and had all the opportunities that I’ve had — the responsibility to have a life and career that reflects that stays with me. At the end of the day, it comes down to what does your life stand for and what do you leave behind?
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