Reflective Response on Gioconda Belli and Slavenka Drakulic books - Essay Example

Belli grew up in a high class Nicaraguan family and her entire family was very unsympathetic towards the Somoza dictatorship that reigned at the time, in Nicaragua. She was a political activist and was against the views of her family because right from a young age, she established a position for herself in the Sandinista Party and joined the revolutionary government. At the family front however, in order to not disturb the minds of her parents and close knit family members, she kept her bourgeoisie job at a lush advertising company.

The story follows as she becomes a very immediate part of the totalitarian regime and upheaval taking place in her country. It is an account of a political as well as personal encounter with the realities that the revolution presents forth. She finds herself disagreeing to a number of things her family want her do, and soon is not able to take control of her heart because of a need to liberate it and set herself free from the active militant she had become. On the other hand, Drakulic wrote a nonfiction piece about the various ramifications of various social and political conflicts taking place in East of Europe.

She has written an account of how the failure of Communism resulted in a failure to meet the needs of women belonging to several countries like Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Poland and Germany, with the help of primary information in the form of interviews that she took with women belonging to these countries. (The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War) She has written the narrative in the form of an essay, explaining the impact of the political strata of society on women and feminism in general.

She has made references and given examples as to how women were subject to oppression and were treated terribly during the time, for example, how they were forced to live under a careless government that refused to supply them with basic necessities including toilet paper and even tampons. Thus, Drakulic is different from Belli in this aspect as she did not experience the totalitarian regime taking place in Europe on her own, but through the eyes of various other women living in different countries across Europe.

At the same time, Belli was able to give a very personal and first hand stance as to the experiences she had and the times she went through under the totalitarian regime that reigned in Nicaragua during the course of her growing up. Belli lived under a right wing totalitarian regime by becoming a part of the government whereas Drakulic was completely against the Communist regime and tried her best to make an attempt and resist it. Belli managed to smuggle weapons, run roadblocks, and also form legions with various revolutionists.

She writes about how she made arguments with Castro and his regime, and contributed to representations at Third World conferences in order to liberate Nicaragua. She was thus a true insider and has been able to provide an honest opinion from the view of a woman of that time. On the other hand, Drakulic criticized the Communist empire and helped women liberate themselves in order to achieve a level of empowerment. She has tried to point out the inadequacies of the government in power and how they thought they were radical, but in reality, they were far from reaching that stage.

She has tried to express through her writing, how women were looked down upon and forced to undertake steps