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Children Caught Up in War: A Review of ''A Thunderous
Whisper"
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2012-12-23 21:12:06
I belong to a several online groups devoted to children’s literature, and much of the discussion in the past week has focused
on finding books to help young people understand the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. Having majored in history
and written historical fiction, I am aware that violence against children is not a recent phenomenon, nor is it unique to the
United States—though the easy availability to the average person of semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazine
clips perhaps is. Although she has not experienced violence first-hand, the Cuban-American author Christina Diaz Gonzalez
comes from a family in which innocent children have found themselves in the middle of deadly conflicts. In her debut novel,
The Red Umbrella (Knopf, 2010), she creates a story based on the experience of her mother, who came from Cuba as part of
Operation Pedro Pan, an airlift of unaccompanied minors to the United States following the victory of Castro’s Communist
forces. [caption id="attachment_ 4020" align="alignleft" width="318" caption="A Thunderous Whisper, cover illustration"]
- CHRISTINA DIAZ Gonane7
Beni of THe ir acs =
/caption] Although the violence is mostly told at a distance—the
exception being a scene in which the main character sees a neighbor hanging from a tree in Havana—it is ever-present in her
latest novel, A Thunderous Whisper (Knopf, 2012). Here, she explores the world of her grandparents and great-grandparents,
who came to the Americas from the Basque region of Spain. Drawing from their lives and culture, she weaves an original
and powerful story of a 12-year-old girl caught up in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the bombing in 1937 of her
town, Guernica, by Nazi forces allied with General Francisco Franco’s Fascist army. The bombing, which leveled the town
of 7,000 and killed hundreds of people (the exact number remains unknown, in part because the town was filled with people
from the surrounding areas for market day and with refugees, and in part because the victorious Fascists had an incentive to
hide the carnage) serves as the inspiration for Pablo Picasso’s iconic anti-war painting, Guernica. Diaz Gonzalez’s main
character, Anetxu, is known as Sardine Girl by her classmates, who bully her relentlessly because she is poor and smells of
the fish that she and her mother sell in the marketplace and deliver door to door. At home, things aren’t much better. Her
mother still mourns the death of Ani’s brother years earlier. Ani endures both physical and emotional abuse from a mother
who won’t call her by her given name but merely “neska’—the word for “girl” in the Basque language—and she misses her
father, who has volunteered to fight against the Fascists, primarily to defend the autonomy of the Basque region. One
afternoon, while sitting under her favorite tree outside the town, Ani sees a slightly older boy with a limp. She has never
seen him before, and she learns that he has recently moved to Guernica because his father manages movie theaters for a
large company. Mathias’s father is of Basque heritage, and his mother is a German Jew; for that reason, he too supports the
anti-Fascist cause. After some mutual distrust, Ani and Mathias become friends. He brings her to his father’s theater, where
they eavesdrop on his father and other community leaders who have become spies. Soon, the children are carrying messages
to the anti-Fascist resistance about the location of Franco’s ground forces and Hitler’s planes and ships. However, they are
unable to protect their town against the devastating bombing. In an instant, both children become orphans. They see the
bodies of their friends and neighbors, and Ani ends up taking care of a former tormentor from school who has been blinded
in the attack. Like the children of Operation Pedro Pan, the wounded and traumatized children of Guernica are sent as
unaccompanied minors to a foreign country—in this case, England. The following year, more unaccompanied children
would arrive, lonely and traumatized, to England—these, the German Jewish survivors on the Kindertransport. In many
ways, the Spanish Civil War served as a testing ground and prelude for the Second World War. On the one hand was the
terror bombing against civilians that the Nazis would use, and would ultimately be used against them and the other Axis
powers. On the other, are the courageous and caring individuals who put their lives on hold and put themselves in danger to
rescue children caught up in war. Diaz Gonzalez’s novel portrays the people in a way that contributes greatly to our
understanding of Picasso’s painting, of the Spanish Civil War, and of the lives of children living in a war zone. The author
realistically depicts life on the home front and the longing of many children to become part of the fight and to “make a
difference” with little understanding of the true costs and horrors of war. She also portrays the people who made a real
difference by taking action to save children from the violence. [caption id="attachment_4023" align="aligncenter"
width="600" caption=" Picasso, Guernica,1937. Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain"]
\ [/caption]
