HW 27: Annotated Bibliography of Baghdad Burning

Riverbend. "Baghdad Burning, Girl Blog From Iraq." New York: The Feministe Press (feministepress.org) 2003.

The book, "Baghdad Burning" written by a girl named Riverbend is a very imformitive because it takes you on a journery through her lifef the life. The young girl, or author, refers to herself as Riverbend and she began reporting her experiences as a civilian observer in Baghadad through the use of blogging in the beginning of August of 2003. The whole book is a serious of blog posts in which she explains what is happeneing around her. This is very important to our class because the class is primarily focused on blogging and women. Also, in the class, "A Blog of One's Own" we have been learning the positive impacts that blogging creates. Especially with a touching subject such as the war, blogging allows people to state their opinions on the war through a post and have others comment and share their feedback as well. This book is really interesting to read because it is wrtitten by a young girl who, she herself, saw eye witness accounts and states things in her posts which would have been otherwise unknown to the average American. I also believe that the book is powerful because it is written by a girl author. Often times, war stories are told by the strong men that fought in battle, but this book is different. It is told from someone who is Iraqi and was there when everything was going on. Also, this "blogging book" reflects on events that were both personal and political. She sometimes will write about the impact the war had on her family and other times, about how it affects the social problems and different views. She writes to defend her culture and even describes how it is similar in some ways. Why anti-Americanism is basically not fair or equal, and how much it angers people in her culture to see things this way, and still going on. The benefits of this type of book is that great deal and amount of insight that once can learn from such great writing. On the other hand, it does present the challenge of fully allowing yourself to be emersed in to the writing and take everything that she is saying and writing about as honest and truthful.