Description: This book explores Angolan women's vital role in nation building through maternalist nationalism. Challenging male-centered war narratives, it highlights women's political activism, labor, and patriotic motherhood, revealing how they shaped Angola's history beyond the battlefield.
Review Quotes: Beyond the Battlefield is an important and much needed study on Angolan women as historical and political subjects. Carefully researched, this study reveals how Angola's emphasis on heroic masculinity was built at the expanse of women's exclusion from political spaces of power. Selina S. Makana takes gender analysis seriously and should be read by specialists on African studies, military history, women and gender studies. --Mariana P. Candido, author of Wealth, Land, and Property in Angola: A History of Dispossession, Slavery, and Inequality