Book excerpt: This book considers issues of gender and representation through an analysis of twentieth-century female revolutionary figures from Ireland, Spain, Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Since revolutions (and their siblings - civil wars) occasion social transformation under often chaotic conditions, they open up space for the potential transformation of gender relations. These women's life writings illustrate gender relations in flux, expose the political symbolism of the strong woman at moments of nation formation and transformation, and display the multiple ways that gender enters into literary, historical, and visual narratives.