My Writing Life: Awareness, Reflection, Inspiration: There's No Turning Back by Alba de Cespedes

“When we are young, we think that our house is the whole world, but the world is wherever we can love others and carry out our work in harmony…”

I agree with this statement from the novel There Is No Turning Back by Alba de Cespedes. Alba de Cespedes must have struggled to cultivate a sense of harmony in her life due to the fascist persecution she endured under Mussolini’s fascist regime.

As soon as this book was published, in the year 1938, it became a bestseller. There’s No Turning Back was awarded the prestigious Viareggio Prize in 1939, but the honor was cancelled by an order to the jury from the government. In January of 1940 the Ministry of Popular Culture blocked further editions, claiming that “it went against fascist morality.” A collection of her short stories entitled Fuga was also banned. (You would not have known this because unlike the work of male authors, Alba de Cespedes’s books were not translated into the English language until the year 2023).

In 1935 Alba de Cespedes spent a brief period of time in jail due to her anti-fascist activism. Something similar happened in 1943 when she had to live in the woods for a while to escape persecution by the Nazis. You can learn about her experiences by reading the entries of her personal diary which I found in The Paris Review when I was researching her life to write this post:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2023/06/13/war-diary/

There Is No Turning Back explores the lives of eight female college students at a time when studying in college was uncommon for women. This is what sparked my curiosity to begin with. Besides, this book is a window that peers into a time period in which women were treated almost like possessions in the Western world, but some of the young women in the story defied the impositions of fascism, which expected women to be obedient wives and mothers. History teaches us, however, that they still had to align with the rigidity of the system in order to survive.

The story takes place in the 1930s. The eight women portrayed in the novel reside in a Catholic boarding house.

In those days women were handed over to the husband by the father when they got married. Once a woman got married, she was expected to be subservient to the husband. (Interestingly, remnants of this situation still express themselves in the act of women who change their original last name for the husband's one as soon as they get married, a habit that I personally find outrageous, outdated and absurd).

From the outset, the eight women start to get to know one another in the spirit of friendship. Their conversations create a vibrant atmosphere filled with uncertainty, doubts and hope. Initially, the young women are eager to support one another. Some of them share their dreams and aspirations.

A couple of women keep their secrets to themselves. There are many forces at play when a woman’s life is controlled and scrutinized.

“In our villages, a woman who’s lived alone in the city is a fallen woman. Those who remained, who passed from the father’s authority to the husband’s, can’t forgive us for having had the key to our own room, going out and coming in when we want. And men can’t forgive us for having studied, for knowing as much as they do.”

The young women in the novel have different expectations, goals and ambitions. They also have different perspectives on love, but something holds them together: the anxieties and social conventions that restrict the female gender and compete against their remote desire for emancipation and autonomy. The paradox is that what holds them together can eventually pull them apart…

In some cases, their actions and decisions are motivated by love; in others, a survival instinct pushes them against their true wishes. Sometimes they are compelled to make choices they do not want to make. In some cases, they fall for mistakes that have the potential to change the course of their lives, but there is one feature they all have in common: they do not have regrets.

I appreciate that they do not cry over the spilt milk of past mistakes. They are busy forging their paths ahead instead. Is the title of the novel alluding to their lack of regrets?

The social trap

The ladies dither over what decisions to make; as they do so, they mull over life matters. They explore their own identities and aspirations. In the struggle to understand what they want from life, they all end up getting caught up in the web of an inevitable social trap: women are considered less smart than men. Aspirations and goals can be easily curtailed by gender double standards, their lives sawed by prejudices and rigid social conventions. The system classifies women into rigid boxes.

This is a thought-provoking book with the potential to trigger enriching discussions. It can be a wonderful resource to nurture book club conversations. I would love to share more about the novel to invite the readers of this blog to exchange views and comments on it, but I have to avoid spoilers here.

Eight different women

The novel follows the lives of eight women with different backgrounds and interests: Vinca, Valentina, Augusta, Silvia, Xenia, Anna, Milly, and Emanuela. Some of their stories are disturbing and heartbreaking; others are hopeful.

Through the lives of the characters, the novel offers glimpses into distressing political situations of the time. Alba de Cespedes is careful not to write about Mussolini’s fascist regime, but she does comment on some of the atrocities of Franco’s regime in Spain. Vinca is a student from Spain, so this establishes a connection to the topic. Franco ruled Spain between 1935 until the year 1975. He was a dictator who sent people to concentration camps and executed political opponents. Surprisingly enough, the brutality of his regime is ignored by history classes in the United States of America. Why is this? Why is Franco’s regime ignored despite the fact that it lasted decades?

As I researched the atrocities of Franco’s regime, I learned that Hitler from Germany and Mussolini from Italy had provided Franco with resources to gain power in Spain during the Civil War.

Fascists help one another to gain power and stay in power, so it is important to educate people on these subjects. Why? Because it can help people make decisions when they have to vote. If your political candidate admires dictators, you know that this is a serious red flag about your political candidate. Who wants a president who rolls the red carpet to dictators?

Augusta, her writing and a paradox in the story

At first, I thought Augusta was a visionary. As an underground writer, she had a rebellious nature who challenged the habits of her time.

Augusta writes novels in which she emphasizes the need to address the situation of women. She is deeply concerned about women’s need for autonomy and freedom. Augusta writes consistently at night, when nobody can see her, but her novels are constantly rejected. Her social awareness, however, clashes with the fact that she cannot bring herself to support and forgive her friend Emanuela when she finally learns about the secret Emanuela had kept away from the group of young women. As readers we see an ambiguity here. Augusta believes that women should set themselves free, but she judges Emanuela by the standards of her time and cannot bring herself to tolerate and respect Emanuela’s decisions and behaviors. In other words, Augusta ends up siding with the patriarchy and lets Emanuela down.

The paradox in Augusta’s intolerance is clear; it resonates in today’s world. Women are supposed to have the same rights as men, but when they do, they are sometimes judged and blocked in several ways. Do you think that arbitrary standards and judgments continue to limit women’s freedoms? What kind of consequences does this have?

In conclusion, we learn that Augusta is not immune to the false morality of the sexist system in which she grew up. This sort of social moralistic rigidity pits women against each other and weakens their position in society. Today we still have to confront attitudes and choices motivated by sexist biases and gender double standards.

I kept thinking about the lives of these women after I finished the novel.

How can we use books like this one to avoid taking our rights for granted?

Falling for the trap of believing that men are smarter than women

I recently learned that some Christian pastors in the United States of America do not believe that women should have the right to vote. They want to take it away... Pete Hegseth is okay with their opinions and even promoted their voices. You can check the reporting from AP News here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG36Gcfkzak

Where is the outrage? The fact that there are women voting for this political party is deeply disturbing to me, but it should not be surprising. Do they think that licking the boots of the patriarchy will protect them?

I also find it hypocritical that a political party that considers itself pro-life had no qualms about bombing a girls’ school. I am still waiting for any signs of accountability on this. The silence is deafening.

In The United States of America seventy-seven million people voted for an incompetent man who does not believe he needs to respect the US Constitution. In November 2024 they voted for the candidate who promised to be a dictator on day one--a convicted felon--to make him president for a second time. They trashed the Rule of Law while claiming that they care about law and order. It cannot get more Orwellian than that. Similarly, ninety-million people refused to vote. They could not vote for a woman.

A woman has to be perfect to become president in America.

To become president a woman in America has to accomplish that which has never been attained, and it will never be enough anyway. Nothing seems to be good enough when a female candidate is in the ballot.

How do I know this? Because a woman in the United States has never been allowed to become president in the 250 years of history. Ninety million people empowered and enabled a convicted felon to become president. This is the dystopian reality of the United States of America.

The same people who complained about grocery prices during Biden’s presidency are now silent, even though grocery prices are much higher now. Can somebody explain this to me? Every time I go to the grocery store, I ask myself the same question.

The convicted felon they voted for president is too busy wasting their taxpayer dollars on vanity projects while food pantries cannot catch up with increasing needs.

Both communist and fascist dictators do it. Their vanity projects matter more to them than caring about the needs of their citizens.

The reality is that there are times when we have to vote to stop a fascist from taking over a country. This is what I will do in November to protect the state I live in from being taken over by fascists; I will have to vote for somebody I did not vote for in the primaries. We have to protect the First Amendment, because without the First Amendment we cannot defend anything else.

In many places in America women are not allowed to lead the Executive Power because they never get enough votes, so my favorite candidate in the primaries lost her chance. Yet I will be voting against fascism. Fascism starves people. Fascism deletes the data to hide the truth; it is corruption and authoritarianism; it lies constantly. Fascism is an autocratic oligarchy, a dictatorship and a form of self-destruction. Fascism makes everything expensive. Fascism bans books and tries to censor the press. Fascism promotes falsehoods by deleting facts. It dismantles education to be able to thrive on the forces of bigotry. It destroys economies and resources. It slanders groups of people.

Seventy-seven million people fell for the trap of believing that men are smarter than women. Unfortunately, we still live in a world where women are not treated with the same consideration as men. Men are given second chances and opportunities despite lying thousands of times, but women are punished for not being perfect. The convicted felon who recommended bleach for covid treatment failed in his first presidency. Yet he was allowed to become president a second time despite the fact that he said more than thirty thousand lies during his first term. The female candidate, on the other hand, was not even given a chance to become president once. A woman has never been allowed to become president in the United Sates of America. Sexism and misogyny are forms of bigotry with terrifying consequences for society and the world.

The fact is that women continue to be treated with less consideration and respect than men across the world. Researchers at the University of St. Andrews found that out of 38 research studies 33 studies showed that women were less likely to be offered active treatments for the same medical conditions that men suffered from.

In the United States the situation is getting worse considering that a change in the Rule of Law enacted by Republican control of the government and driven by their religious bigoted ideas, leads to the deaths of women. The reason for this is that women do not get to receive the medical treatment required to save their lives. I can cite, for example, the case of Tierra Walker who died recently in San Antonio, Texas, when she was twenty weeks pregnant. Tierra Walker was diagnosed with preeclampsia. Termination of the pregnancy was indicated to save her life. Due to the change in laws imposed by Republicans, Tierra Walker did not receive the medical treatment she urgently needed. Consequently, she died. This is what Republicans are doing in America while pretending to care about life. They are meddling in women’s healthcare and making it even worse. It is not only women the ones who die.

Consider, for example, the terrorist acts of ICE Gestapo. A man with diabetes in an ICE detention center was denied access to insulin and died as a result of that. How is this considered pro-life?

Another man in Texas who had no criminal records and was simply working to make a living was shot by ICE. Just to appease the Nazis in America, let me clarify that he was not undocumented. He was not a criminal. He was working when he was shot. With the bullet in his body, he was taken to a detention center. This is what Nazis did too. Just like Nazis, there are those who excuse shooting at people once they decide to label them a certain way. Brutality is part of their ideology.

Education and awareness are necessary to address this Orwellian situation, but education and awareness are not enough. The next political leaders will have to work to impart justice as well. Using the word “unity” to protect the privileged men who should have been impeached led the way to more injustice and demagoguery. History is a helpful teacher. A leader who preaches about unity and neglects the need for justice is not going to bring positive change. It will create the setting for future dictators.

Seventy-seven million people voted for a pathological liar, a convicted felon, a man who had openly bragged about sexually assaulting women. He had been the best friend of a pedophile for decades. Yet the voters thought he would be the one to release the Epstein files. In violation of the Transparency Act only some of the Epstein files were released with the names of the perpetrators fully redacted; in contrast, the names of the victims with their contact details were revealed. As a result of this irresponsible, cruel action, the survivors had to face threats and bullying. There are three million files that have not been released. This is not surprising considring that convicted felon Donald Trump told Marjorie Taylor Greene that he does not want the files released because it will hurt his friends.

This is what seventy- seven million people in America voted for.: guardians of pedophiles.

It is exhausting to witness how the convicted felon gets away with trashing the laws that keep our water and air safe. It is outrageous to learn that he ditches laws that help protect public lands and national parks. He is opening public lands to hunting and fishing now.

Non-human animals did not vote for this.

In November 2024 seventy-seven million people voted for a president who likes to insult female journalists on a regular basis, and we are expected to believe that this is a normal situation, that a wealthy man is allowed to get away with anything. We have to pretend that abusing women is acceptable in America. We will not do that.

We will resist.

My question for the reader is this: Why do so many American voters and non-voters have so little self-respect?

Those of us who genuinely care about America will resist fascism. We will continue to speak up for justice and democracy. Accountability matters. Hopefully, leaders of the opposition will awaken to the importance of justice. When the word unity is used to protect privileged war criminals, the standards are set to enable more dictators.

Vote and make your voice heard. Every voice matters. Democracy matters. Freedom should never be taken for granted. Our survival depends on it.

Relevant links:

Food pantries in America are having trouble keeping up with increasing needs:

https://www.hungerresourcenetwork.org/u-s-food-banks-having-trouble-keeping-up-with-increasing-needs

An interesting analysis comparing Franco’s fascism with modern fascism:

https://theconversation.com/what-francos-fascist-regime-in-spain-can-teach-us-about-todays-america-274248

Convicted felon Donald trump is using taxpayer dollars to pay for ads to promote himself:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-election-campaign-advertisements-bfa8e3c1c9e50de03092b4ec27055da9

Deporting migrants to other countries leaves them vulnerable to slavery and trafficking and it is a human rights violation.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/28/us-deportations-donald-trump-violate-human-rights-un

Meta is afraid of women fighting to protect their rights:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/21/meta-ban-virginia-woolf-a-room-of-ones-own-barcelona-teatre-raval