I remember as a young woman looking at a picture of a Palestinian woman who had just lost her child to martyrdom but was smiling with a serene pride. This was the first time I had come across the phrases mother of martyr or Intifada smile.
How could a woman show joy over the death of a child?
I could not get the question out of my mind. I later discovered that stories of women who publicly rejoice on the death of a child in support of their community have been told for centuries in the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Sikh traditions. There was a depth and complexity to the image of a mother of a martyr that required much more than a passing glance to be understood.
From the Introduction by Suzanne Evans
Watch CBC Television's The National's history of the Silver Cross featuring Suzanne Evans. (30 minutes)
Mothers
of Heroes,
Mothers of Martyrs...is an important
contribution, as it
examines how recruiters manipulated familial notions
of honour and
duty, and the way that ordinary Canadian women
subverted their gender
norm of life-giving. [It] uses historical precedent to
challenge modern
assumptions about those
who volunteer their children for suicide bombing and essentialist assumptions about women.
who volunteer their children for suicide bombing and essentialist assumptions about women.
-- Canadian Military History
A powerful
exploration of the role of the mourning mother in
war, including
an examination of the politics of maternal grief
--The Globe and Mail
--The Globe and Mail
Suzanne
Evans
holds a
Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the
University of Ottawa. She has traveled, lived, worked
and studied in
many
countries including China and India. Her work has
appeared in Canadian
Military History, The
Ottawa
Citizen,
Ottawa
Magazine,
The Beaver, The
New
Quarterly,
Numen, The
Journal
of
Psychology
and Judaism,
and Public. She
has recently finished a research fellowship with the Canadian War
Museum.