Review: Agents of Change by Christine Hillsberg

Synopsis: The timely and revelatory exploration of the pioneering women who changed the insulated world of international espionage—from the barrier-crashing challenges of the 1960s to the present day reckoning—told through the eyes of a former intelligence operative herself.

Through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never spoken publicly, Agents of Change tells an enthralling and, at times, disturbing story set against the backdrop of the evolving women’s movement. It was the 1960s, a “secretarial” era, when women first gained a foothold and pushed against the one-dimensional, pop-culture trope of the sexy Cold War Bond Girl. Underestimated but undaunted, they fought their way, decade-by-decade, through adversity to the top of the spy game.

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"... there is no crying in espionage ..."

From the 1960s through to our current decade, women have endured misogyny and sexism in the workplace, as well as both racial and gender discrimination - the agencies of the secret services are no different nor are they immune. The documented behaviour towards women by men in Hillsberg's book could apply to women anywhere - except in these instances, the women run the risk of exposure, imprisonment and death - all for serving for the greater good of their nation. 

Hillsberg documents across seven decades, the internal and external threats the women battled, with a more narrower focus on the barriers being put up to their advancement - oft times by their own gender - setting all this in context against the modern-day "Bond" franchise.

"Agents of Change" looks at the numerous milestones these women achieved across the decades, from working as secretaries and clerks, to going out in the field of covert ops, to becoming departmental heads. All the while having to walk the fine line of work-life balance that their male counterparts did not. As Hillsberg notes: "... spying was still very much a man's world ..." and some of the stories presented highlight that fact - detailing the prevalence of sexual harassment and unwelcome advances including those from both colleagues, and external agents and operatives, slut-shaming, aggression, and the constant deflection of the barrage of rumour and inuendo when advancement does come their way. Hillsberg also sadly notes, that women in the Agency did not feel able to support other women due to potential repercussions for themselves and their own careers - this is still prevalent today - women can be their own worst enemy.

As the decades roll on, Hillsberg concentrates her focus a small number of prominent women and the challenges they faced - married women were often forced to give up their careers for their families, but also in order to ensure the career advancement of their husbands. For many, they elevated themselves above societal and cultural norms to work in a field where threats to personal safety could be a daily occurrence. Hillsberg documents that for some, the inevitable toll on their mental health and personal lives and those of their families, was too much and they left the Service, a number taking on prominent roles the the government and business sectors.

This is an eye-opening chronicle of the struggles women faced in the Agency, written by one who had the insider's take on what these women experienced. There are still many more untold stories, but as the synopsis notes, this is a ".... long overdue tribute to the survivors....".

In conjunction with this book, I also recommend reading "Secret Servants of the Crown" by Claire Hubbard-Hall, which looks at the role of women in the British Secret Services.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings: Angelou's Quest To Truth And Power

Review by Mahvish Shahab for Feminism In India:

Published in 1969, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, is Maya Angelou’s captivating and remarkably beautiful autobiographical novel. She was an artist, a poet, a writer, a composer and an activist among other roles which she defined very well throughout her career.

The book is a coming-of-age work which narrates the life of Marguerite (also called ‘My’ or ‘Maya’ by her brother, Bailey) from the tender age of three to the late teens and the struggles Maya and Bailey had to face. The young children were labelled like baggage and sent away to their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. It was in the South United States that Maya witnessed racism and prejudice all around. There are numerous incidents in the book in which Maya faced difficulties while growing up as a black girl in the South, yet triumphed despite persistent institutionalised discrimination.

Angelou has poignantly woven her story of oppression where she is caught in the crossfires of white supremacy and male prejudice. Maya has referred to the racial barrier as one of the ‘cages’ which she felt throughout her time spent in the segregated community. Another cage that she felt trapped by was that of being a woman which put her in a more vulnerable position. She recounts her feelings of being challenged racially while growing up and being restrained by certain cultural and gender based biases.

The woman who was her own twin

From NOTED - North & South:

To ancient Greeks, the chimera was a spitting, snarling, fire-breathing female patchwork of scary animals, with a goat thrown in for good measure. “A thing of immortal make,” wrote Homer, “not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire.” She apparently lived in Lycia (part of modern-day Turkey).

This might seem a long way from the Department of Social Services office in Washington State, USA, where a solo mother was summoned after applying for welfare in 2003. The incredible story of Lydia Fairchild – an American chimera and a living testament to the tricks heredity plays on us – is recounted in a new book by US science writer Carl Zimmer, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: the Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity.

In the years since Bianchi’s paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal in 1996, researchers have found that more than half of mothers carry fetal cells decades after their pregnancies. And according to a recent estimate, says Zimmer, 42% of us carry cells containing our mother’s DNA.

Heredity, says Zimmer – and this is the overarching theme of his book – can surge and commingle in strange ways, blowing backwards and sideways like a strange eddy of wind, or a river current flowing the wrong way.

read more here @ NOTED

Liza Mundy’s “Code Girls”

Kathryn Smith reviews Liza Mundy's "Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II" for History News Network:

Even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. Navy had realized its intelligence operation was woefully inadequate. The Navy needed code-breakers, what are more formally known as cryptanalysts, and it began recruiting them … at the elite women’s colleges of the Northeast.

After the attack, the need became even more pressing, and the U.S. Army jumped on board. Between them, the two services—which were so competitive one wonders at times who they considered the true enemy in World War II—recruited more than 10,000 women to work at its top-secret code-breaking operations in Washington, D.C. Their story is told for the first time by journalist Liza Mundy in Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II. Of the 20,000 code-breakers in both services, more than half were women.

Mundy’s book is a welcome addition to the ranks of recent books revealing the crucial supportive work of women in war and peace, including Denise Kiernan’s The Girls of Atomic City, about the women who worked on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Numbers, about the black women mathematicians at NASA.

read more here @ History News Network

Horse-Riding Librarians: Bookmobiles of the Great Depression

The Pack Horse Library initiative, which sent librarians deep into Appalachia, was one of the New Deal’s most unique plans. The project, as implemented by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), distributed reading material to the people who lived in the craggy, 10,000-square-mile portion of eastern Kentucky. The state already trailed its neighbors in electricity and highways. And during the Depression, food, education and economic opportunity were even scarcer for Appalachians.

When materials became too worn to circulate, librarians made them into new books. They pasted stories and pictures from the worn books into binders, turning them into new reading material. Recipes, also pasted into binders and circulated throughout the mountains, proved so popular that Kentuckians started scrapbooks of quilt patterns, too.

In 1936, packhorse librarians served 50,000 families, and, by 1937, 155 public schools. Children loved the program; many mountain schools didn’t have libraries, and since they were so far from public libraries, most students had never checked out a book. ”‘Bring me a book to read,’ is the cry of every child as he runs to meet the librarian with whom he has become acquainted,” wrote one Pack Horse Library supervisor. “Not a certain book, but any kind of book. The child has read none of them.” 

read more here @ The Smithsonian