16 pages • 32 minutes read
Dunya MikhailThe War Works Hard
Nonfiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context
As someone born and raised in Iraq, Dunya Mikhail understands the true cost of war on a personal level, from her own life experiences. War has long been one of the dominant themes in Mikhail’s body of work; in both this particular poem and the collection it features in, The War Works Hard, Mikhail uses her poetry as a means of documenting and reflecting upon the horrors of armed conflict, both in her homeland and around the world. Mikhail’s poetry is passionate but not partisan: she is less interested in promoting an explicit political ideology than she is in decrying the human misery and destruction war brings to vulnerable people caught up in any form of armed conflict.
As a former refugee, Mikhail demonstrates a strong sense of compassion and solidarity for those left displaced by war and/or dictatorship. Living in Iraq during the 1980’s, Mikhail was an eyewitness to the lengthy conflict between Iraq and Iran that dominated that decade, an experience which helps lend a unique authority to her work. As an Iraqi woman, Mikhail has felt the effects of war directly; as a poet, she bears witness for all the countless anonymous victims who cannot speak for themselves.
Historical Context
Mikhail’s homeland, Iraq, has suffered many tragedies in both the 20th and 21st centuries. Apart from the brutalities of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship – which ultimately forced Mikhail herself to go into exile – Iraq has also been scarred by war. The Iran-Iraq War lasted from 1980 until 1988 and killed approximately half a million people. Although relations between Iraq and Iran had long been tense, this particular conflict was initiated by Iraq, which invaded Iran under the pretext that Iran’s Islamic Revolution could spread to its neighbor. The following eight years saw many battles interspersed between periods of stalemate and resulted in many war crimes, such as the use of child soldiers and chemical weapons. The war ended in 1988 after a powerful Iraqi offensive, after which Iran accepted a ceasefire. The war came to an official end on August 8, 1988.
The more recent Iraq War initiated by the United States lasted from 2003 until 2011. The USA claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and forcibly removed him from power. The protracted conflict caused many civilian deaths and brought considerable instability to the country. As a collection published in 2005, The War Works Hard appears to have been inspired, at least in part, by the reemergence of war in Mikhail’s homeland. In more recent years, Iraq has faced further violence at the hands of ISIS, which attempted to establish a severely violent and fundamentalist Islamic theocracy throughout parts of the Middle East.
As of this guide’s writing, Iraq remains an unstable region suffering from the trauma of these longstanding periods of political and social upheaval, and Mikhail has been unable to return to her homeland in the years since she fled as a refugee.
