Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine's Unbecoming

An honest reckoning with the Forever War, masculinity, and the violence of American hegemony abroad, at home, and on the psyche, from a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who came to question his belief in the U. S.'s democratizing mission

In the winter of 2006, Lyle Jeremy Rubin arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School in Quantico, Virginia. He'd joined the Marines convinced he was fulfilling his duty to his country. He believed the "war on terror" was necessary to national security, and would help to bring democracy and freedom to Afghanistan. And he sought a version of manhood that he thought military service could provide. Honorably discharged in 2011, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his ideals, about himself or his country, intact.

Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body is a story of profound personal and political change. Rubin, a supervisor of men ordered to kill, shares his experiences on training bases in North Carolina, California, and Afghanistan, tracking his increasing disaffection with military culture, and his evolution into an activist for peace.

Rubin brings us face to face in this argument-driven memoir with the U. S.'s presence in the Middle East, all while analyzing the racism, class divides, and culture of conquest that oil the machinery of American empire.