With All Our Strength

the long version

The members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) have risked life and limb daily to help their tortured sisters in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1977.With All Our Strength is the inside story of this female-led underground organization and their fight for the rights of Afghan women. Anne Brodsky, the first writer given in-depth access to visit and interview their members and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, shines light on the gruesome, often tragic, lives of Afghan women under some of the most brutal sexist oppression in the world.A skilled interviewer, observer, and writer, Brodsky chronicles how RAWA members, whose identities have been concealed in order to survive, have run schools and orphanages, supplied medical care in secret, and covertly documented fundamentalist atrocities against Afghan women through cameras hidden in their clothes. Since the toppling of the Taliban, RAWA continues its important work, helping women survive not only the aftermath of years of abuse, but broken families, poverty and the many discriminations that still exist.An impassioned, riveting account of RAWA's 26 year struggle to build empowerment, hope and resistance among the girls and women of Afghanistan, With All Our Strength is a paean to the resilience of Afghan women and a model for women's rights organizations around the world.