María Sánchez is obsessed with what she cannot see. As a field veterinarian following in the footsteps of generations before her, she travels the countryside of Spain bearing witness to a life eroding before her eyes—words, practices, and people slipping away because of depopulation, exploitation of natural resources, inadequate environmental policies, and development encroaching on farmland and villages. Sánchez, the first woman in her family to dedicate herself to what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession, rebuffs the bucolic narrative of rural life often written by—and for consumption by—people in cities, describing the multilayered social complexity of people who are proud, resilient, and often misunderstood.
Sánchez interweaves family stories of three generations with reflections on science and literature. She focuses especially on the often dismissed and undervalued generations of women who have forgone education and independence to work the land and tend to family. In doing so, she asks difficult questions about gender equity and labor. Part memoir and part rural feminist manifesto, Land of Women acknowledges the sacrifices of Sánchez’s female ancestors who enabled her to become the woman she is.
A bestseller in Spain, Land of Women promises to ignite conversations about the treatment and perception of rural communities everywhere.
María Sánchez is obsessed with what she cannot see. As a field veterinarian following in the footsteps of generations before her, she travels the countryside of Spain bearing witness to a life eroding before her eyes—words, practices, and people slipping away because of depopulation, exploitation of natural resources, inadequate environmental policies, and development encroaching on farmland and villages. Sánchez, the first woman in her family to dedicate herself to what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession, rebuffs the bucolic narrative of rural life often written by—and for consumption by—people in cities, describing the multilayered social complexity of people who are proud, resilient, and often misunderstood.
Sánchez interweaves family stories of three generations with reflections on science and literature. She focuses especially on the often dismissed and undervalued generations of women who have forgone education and independence to work the land and tend to family. In doing so, she asks difficult questions about gender equity and labor. Part memoir and part rural feminist manifesto, Land of Women acknowledges the sacrifices of Sánchez’s female ancestors who enabled her to become the woman she is.
A bestseller in Spain, Land of Women promises to ignite conversations about the treatment and perception of rural communities everywhere.
Mara Snchez
is a Spanish writer and field veterinarian and the author ofCuaderno de campo (Field Notebook), Almciga: Un vivero de palabras de nuestro medio rural (Seedbed), andTierra de mujeres: Una mirada ntima y familiar al mundo rural(Land of Women), a bestseller in Spain, with translations into French and German. Her poetry and prose have been translated into French, Portuguese, English, and German, and she is a regular contributor to publications on literature, feminism, and rural culture. She lives in Crdoba, Spain.
Praise for Land of Women
"A passionate and touching book...Land of Women may be a small
book, but it is mighty. It gives a voice to rural women and speaks
truths long hidden." — Christian Science Monitor
"Sánchez’s prose is both lyrical and nebulous, resulting in a deep,
personal cultural history that digs into areas not often
discussed...a moving feminist account of women’s historical roles
in rural communities." — Foreword Reviews
"Writer and veterinarian María Sánchez celebrates the women of her
world, quiet workers of an ultrapatriarchal campaign. As
indispensable as they are invisible. As omnipresent as they are
silent. In this feminist and poetic manifesto, Sánchez draws on her
own history to measure how much the earth is also a woman’s
affair.” — Le Monde
“This book does not talk about the women who will fill the city
streets. It speaks of a rural feminism . . . that remembers the
strong and wise women who worked the land without raising their
voices.” ― Time Out
“Narrated with agility, lucidity, forcefulness, and tenderness.
There is knowledge, pride, vitality, and fantastic energy in this
memoir about the women who, against the tide of history, didn’t
leave their family homes or their land, the ones who stayed with
their men (or without them) in the rural area, the ones who
resisted the exodus to the cities.” — El País
“Land of Women is a beautiful tribute to the genealogy of women who
came before, women with hands that molded the earth and who were
part of the earth.” — El Heraldo de Aragón
“María Sánchez asks us to consider the silent contribution of women
in rural areas free from nostalgia, bucolic sentiments, and
prejudice.” — El Mundo
“María Sánchez recovers the trace of the women in her life—in her
learning, in the field, and in the home. As with the feminist
movement, she turns our attention to that which was invisible to us
until now.” — Zenda
“Land of Women launches a harangue against urban snobbery: no more
stigmatizing the people of the countryside and ignoring their
workers.” ― Eldiario
“Sánchez’s ferocity echoes Elena Ferrante.” — Aysmptote
“An expression of intimate and familiar memory endowed with a great
poetic strength.” — ABC Sevilla
“An essential [book] that focuses on the compelling need to expand
feminist discourse so that it affects not only women in big cities
but also those in rural areas. It deserves to be read by everyone.
After all, there’s still soil under the concrete.” ― La
Vanguardia
“With Land of Women, María Sánchez has become an essential writer
to read.” — El Cultural
“Faced with a feminism that is highlighted through social media,
María Sánchez knows that outside the cities, agriculture is an
assumption without consideration. She gives feminist voice to the
field.” — El Cultural
Land of Women urges us to reconnect with the rural world,
especially its women, and to tell our stories free of shame.” —
ABC Cultura
“An epic book—political, pure, and sincere. There are few books as
necessary as this.” — El Confidencial
“Land of Women is personal and unique—a book that cannot be defined
under any one label. A book that is born from mourning. A book of
trial and vindication. A book of intimate and collective
memory.” — Anna María Iglesia
“Land of Women is simultaneously everything I do not know and
everything I love: my midwife great-grandmother, my literature
teacher grandmother, my historian mother, them, me, us, all
different, together.” — Luna Miguel
“Rooted in our landscape, suffused with tenderness and courage,
Sánchez gives voice to all of those anonymous figures who work and
nourish the fields.” — Cristina Sánchez-Andrade
“This is more than a book. It’s a piece of the earth, of the land,
of life itself.” — Aleix Costa
“Land of Women is truth: truth and caring, truth and vigor, truth
and consciousness, truth and reality.” — Sergio Sancor
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