ABSTRACT
This essay, written in 2006, is a collage of narratives from the men in my life as they respond to questions of masculinity and the military. The collage includes excerpts from interviews with my husband, my son, and the letter that accompanied my father’s Bronze Star in 1946; my father died in 2003. The interviews were conducted when my husband of 27 years, Barry, was 52; he is a veteran of the Marines during the Viet Nam war years. Our son Zeb was 16. The inspiration of this essay came from my husband and son attending the protest at the School of the Americas (SOA) for 8 straight years. The SOA is a military installation that, among other things, trains U.S. and South American military in “information extraction.”
