What is the theme in How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulic?

The only major characters in How We Survived Communism are women. We meet women of all ages—Slavenka's grandmother, mother and daughter, her friends and acquaintances of many ages all across Eastern Europe and emigrants to the United States. Slavenka is an ardent feminist who is often asked about the experience of women under communism and after communism in Eastern Europe. One of her points about women under communism is that under communism there is so much social control and so much poverty that women simply cannot hope to be women. Women are raped without consequence, sold into prostitution, beaten by their husbands, forced to have abortions—or not to have them—and so on.