I found Cartography to be an honest and detailed description of life behind war. Katherine Schifani paints a stark Iraqi life and that is the truth of it. I found the story to be compelling in its openness. Sometimes there is excitement, but most of the time military life is humdrum and just day to day getting the job done. I often thought MacGyver would excel in the military because you have to have a secondary MOS in MacGyverism (chuckle).

The book doesn’t focus on Schifani’s sexuality. It focuses on the difficulty of operating overseas in a hostile environment while having to maintain civility. It’s a political game and a very dangerous one at that.

Cartography wasn’t a quick read for me. I read it in chapters. Military life can be slow at times and mundane. It doesn’t mean that each step isn’t important.

I am a veteran and maybe this is why I enjoyed Schifani’s book so much. As a female, I understood what working with a patriarchal mindset is like and found myself commiserating with the soldier many times.

I thank Schifani and her team members for their service. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.

Not the best military memoir I’ve read. Nor even the best Iraq memoir I’ve read. The book tends to bounce choppily from episode to episode without transitions and often seems to include individuals in the narrative without adequate background or introduction. The LGBTQ components are awkwardly mixed among other elements and are more detailed/graphic than the military conflict details. Disappointing and ,frankly, difficult to read.

3.25 Stars. This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I just want to first mention that I’m getting over a little flu bug, and still don’t feel 100% so I apologize if I’m a not making as much sense as normally. This was my second nonfiction read of ’22, and I was really interested to read about a queer woman, serving in the Air Force and stationed in Iraq, during the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell period. She was working as a counterterrorism advisor with U.S. Special Forces during this time and I’m not sure if that job title is what through me off, but this memoir was different than I expected. I don’t mean it’s all different in a bad way, as there were very interesting parts of the book and I learned things were even a bigger clusterf@ck over there than I thought, but I’m still left feeling unsure about this book as a whole.

The book could be very jarring at times. While I knew this would mostly take place when Schifani was deployed, I didn’t realized that it was going to be only then. I thought we would have some thoughts about why Schifani wanted to server her country, why she picked the Air Force and how that went for her, or really just any kind of background but instead nothing and we are thrown right into day one of her deployment. We soon learn that she arrives in Iraq as one of the only officers at this post, and the book takes off from there. As jarring as the book begins, it ends the same way too. I actually thought my Kindle was messed us since the book literally just ends.

I think a big issue for me was that it was harder to connect to Schifani, than I expected. I believe not really knowing her history, besides what is told in a few quick flashbacks, made it hard for me to get a sense of who she really was. Sometimes she was so impressive to me, especially being in a homophobic and sexist working environment, other times I couldn’t really understand her choices. She had been through a lot there like sexual assault, being unprepared for a job, and being a female in a position of power when some men had never really seen that before… so who am I to really question her, I just wished I formed a better connection to be able to understand her better.

I think in the end this book was more about the mess Schifani had to work through, how so much money was wasted or appropriated incorrectly, and just in general what a mess it was before the changeover was supposed to happen. Whereas I thought this was going to be a book more about Schifani herself. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if it had a better mix of both. I believe if you are wondering about this time period (Iraq 2011) or reading about what a woman officer went through over there, I think you would find this interesting. It wasn’t really what I was expecting or hoping for, but it might work better for readers who know more about what to expect going into the start.