The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War in Around the World

Oct 30, 2022 Sue Kozlowski rated it liked it

Shelves: 196-countries, memoir, murder, non-fiction, dictators, auto-biogr, civil-war, poverty, politics, z-196-read-nicaragua

I read this book as part of my quest to read a book written by an author from every country in the world. The author of this book is from Nicaragua.

Gioconda Belli is a woman born and raised in an upper-middle-class family in Managua, Nicaragua. When she was young, she had snuck away from the watchful eye of her nanny and visited the building where the farm workers lived. She saw the cramped, crowded living conditions where families slept practically on top of each other on a pile of rags. It see I read this book as part of my quest to read a book written by an author from every country in the world. The author of this book is from Nicaragua.

Gioconda Belli is a woman born and raised in an upper-middle-class family in Managua, Nicaragua. When she was young, she had snuck away from the watchful eye of her nanny and visited the building where the farm workers lived. She saw the cramped, crowded living conditions where families slept practically on top of each other on a pile of rags. It seems as though this was one of the forces that drove her to want to bring equality to the citizens of her country.

Nicaragua lived under the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The chasm between the rich and the poor was stark. His government often imprisoned or executed citizens indiscriminately. As Gionconda became a young adult, she joined the revolutionaries in her country, known as the Sandinistas. This group named themselves after Augusto César Sandino, a guerrilla soldier who lived in the mountains and led the resistance group.

Gioconda married, had children, divorced, had affairs, and fought with the revolutionaries. She was exiled to Costa Rica for a time. She lost many friends who were killed during the fighting in her country. She fervently believed in the cause and risked her life to fight the dictatorship.

The author paints the US in a very bad light. The Sandinistas overthrew Somoza in 1979. Ronald Reagan was the US president at the time and he provided money and arms to the Contras, a group aligned with the defeated dictatorship. Gioconda said she didn't understand why the US would support the ruthless dictator when the Sandinista's were fighting to bring equality to the people. I have read that the Sandinistas came under international criticism for human rights abuses, mass execution, and oppression of indigenous peoples - but that is never mentioned by the author.

There is a paragraph at the beginning of the book that really struck me - I have never heard anyone describe an experience that I too have had - the feeling you have when you first discover 'yourself'.

"I will always associate the end of my childhood with the memory of one specific day... All of a sudden, as if a thunderbolt had struck me, I realized that I would be alone in my body forever... In a single, terrifying instant I became acutely aware that nobody could share my inner space, feel what I felt, listen to my innermost thoughts... It dawned on me that I could never look at myself directly in the face - I could only do it through a mirror. For a few days, I was quite disconcerted by the enormity of my realization."

I remember the moment when I came to this same realization - that I was my own person, with my own body and my own thoughts, separate from everyone else - that I alone would make decisions that would determine my journey through life.

This is a very educational story about Nicaragua's history, albeit a biased one. Gioconda is a very brave and strong woman who fought strongly for what she believed in and for the country she loved. ...more

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