Textual Poaching

War Never Changes

Can you spot the difference?

I never in my life thought that I would marry a soldier. I never pictured any part of that as my future life. But then I met Alex, fell in love, and his lifestyle was just another piece of him that I had to accept as part of the whole package. I have never regretted my choice since then but the culture of being an Army wife has become an enormous part of my daily life. I look around at the other Army wives I know and we are such a unique culture because we band together and we support our husbands in a lifestyle that can be so difficult sometimes. I started thinking about how the things that we deal with are the exact same circumstances wives have dealt with for over a hundred years now. I began searching for images that represented the moments that we are most keenly aware of as Army wives...departures, deployments, homecomings, and death. Recently, we received news that my husband is being deployed this year and all of these things point to the fact that war never changes and that is my new reality.

Artist/Teach statement: Above I have pointed out the many correlations between the past images of Army wives and the pictures of my husband and I mixed with images of other current Army families experiencing many of the same life events. We know that the wars that they fight may be with different countries, may be in different places, but they always seem to boil down to the same things and mean the same problems for Army families. I feel that juxtaposing these images makes similarities and differences very clear to those who look. 

This activity could be very beneficial for students in any content area. For an English classroom specifically, students could take a passage of book, poem, or even a film adaptation of literature, and isolate an element of the work that they identify with. Then they can attempt to create a new work of art in response to what they have found. This would give students a way to respond to the literature that we are exploring and make it their own. This will help them build analytical skills for future use.