CHASING THE DAYLIGHT
One Woman’s Journey to Becoming a U.S. Army Intelligence Officer
by Joanna Rakowski
A Polish immigrant recalls her experiences in the U.S. Army in this debut memoir.
A professionally trained ballerina who practiced dance full time for nearly 15 years in Poland, Rakowski notes that she “practically lived at the Great Opera in Warsaw” for more than a decade. After immigrating to the United States in 1995, however, she could only find work teaching ballet at a local YMCA. Four years later, she ran into a U.S. Army Recruitment table while enrolled in college courses. She decided to “change and reinvent myself from a fragile ballerina to a hardcore U.S. Army intelligence officer.” The book touches on her life in Poland and her adaptation to American culture, but it focuses primarily on Rakowski’s four years in the military, from basic training to an overseas deployment in Europe. She served as a post–September 11 interrogator, linguist, and intelligence analyst and writes, “Even though I had never seen the battlefield, I was still a hero.” While proud of her service, Rakowski doesn’t shy away from the “heartache and loneliness” of military life and the realization that “deep down in my heart, I was still this fragile ballerina.” Like many veterans, she laughs at the paradoxes and bureaucracy of military life. Women, she recalls, were never called “soldiers”; they were referred to as “ladies,” even when outshining their male colleagues. Also emphasized is the way the military impacted her personal life. From openly discussing her divorce to “having to defend my American way of life, my American dream” to her friends and family, Rakowski doesn’t shy away from the personal. Occasionally repetitive, the book’s 400 pages could have used tighter editing. Nevertheless, this is a well-written, intimate account that breaks the norms of war memoir in its focus on the sacrifices of soldiers who never step foot onto a battlefield. It’s also an important reminder of the centrality of immigrants to the U.S. military in the modern era.
A poignant story of an immigrant’s experiences in the U.S. Army.