An urgent corrective to the erasure of the female fighter from narratives on gender and power, demanding that we see all women as political actors.

Violence, for me, and for the women I chronicle in this book, is simply a political reality.

Though the female fighter is often seen as an anomaly, women make up nearly 30% of militant movements worldwide. Historically, these womenviewed as victims, weak-willed wives, and prey to Stockholm Syndromehave been deeply misunderstood. Radicalizing Her holds the female fighter up in all her complexity as a kind of mirror to contemporary conversations on gender, violence, and power. The narratives at the heart of the book are centered in the Global South, and extend to a criticism of the Wests response to the female fighter, revealing the arrayed forces that have driven women into battle and the personal and political elements of these decisions.

Gowrinathan, whose own