Q&A with author of 'Formation'

Ryan Leigh Dostie wanted to be an author from a very young age — but she never thought her first book would be a memoir about her time in the military. 

Dostie enlisted in the U.S. Army 2000 looking for adventure and something different. She was sent to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California to — she thought — perfect the Japanese she already knew. But her pre-9/11 ideas about life in the military quickly changed and the rest of her life went with it. 

Nineteen years later, Dostie has published "Formations: A Woman's Memoir of Stepping Out of Line" — the story of her post-9/11 Army experience, being part of the first occupying force in Iraq, and the military sexual assault that underlaid all of it.

Connecting Vets had the opportunity to speak with Dostie about her novel.

Ryan Leigh Dostie: We were watching on the screens in our classrooms. We watched the towers go down. I remember all my teachers — who were native speakers so they were from Iran — they were all just saying "Please let it not be Iran." I didn't quite get it then. But pretty soon after I realized, oh my god we're going to war. And I'm in the Army. 

That was a shock. I don't think we really believed it. Even when we were getting ready to go to Iraq there was just this big joke that went around Fort Polk that we weren't actually going. We were just packing to go up to do training in California. There was this real sense of denial. 

Connecting Vets: But that wasn't the only shock you experienced early in your military career. Your story of being sexually assaulted at Fort Polk opens the novel and remains a prominent plotline throughout the rest of the book. Why did you choose to open the book this way? 

RLD: Originally, I did not think to start there. I actually had originally started in Iraq with the death of my friend. It took me a while to write what is now the first part of the book — it was one of the later things I wrote...Once I looked at it and started putting it into place, it made sense. It seemed like the book could start nowhere else except right there. 

CV: Was writing that portion of the book the most challenging part? 

RLD: There were several challenges. The first is the obvious rape scene. For such a short scene it took me a long time to write it. 

But another part that was hard for me was talking about having sex again so early afterward — that was with Andres. Because for a very long time I felt a lot of shame about that. It's still kind of — scary I guess is the word — to admit that. I'm always afraid people are going to point fingers and say, well, you must not have been that upset or traumatized because that is what the command and people around me said at the time.

CV: At the time, you had a really hard time getting anyone in your chain of command to believe you. It really affected your entire military career afterward. Do you think the environment around military sexual trauma is still the same? Are the changes being made enough? 

RLD: I think some of it seems promising. I like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's proposal about a third-party reporting system. I like that they now have advocates, victim advocates you can go to. You have people you can talk to. When you report you can have a victim advocate with you. These are all things I didn't have. 

I think those are better. I think what really needs to change is the culture and the mythology surrounding rape. A lot of what still persists to this day...is this idea that women only report sexual assault or rape to get back at men or ruin men's careers or because they were married and don't want to get caught.

I want something that's going to dispel that mythology — those lies really — and try to teach more empathy about what rape victims or sexual assault victims go through when they report. If they realize what these victims go through when they report, it might make them second guess this idea that she's just reporting because she's retaliating. 

CV: How do you think the military can change that mythology? 

RLD: It has to go from the top to bottom. You have to have a command that's very serious and takes the issue seriously. 

CV: What impact do you hope your book has on readers? 

RLD: For one thing, I want people to know this happens. This happens a lot. It's still happening. I've had so many women reach out to me and tell me their stories or that they went through something similar and it's heartbreaking. I always thought that things were getting so much better. But I'm happy people are talking about it. 

I want young women or men — anyone going in — I want it to be a cautionary tale. Not in the sense of don't join, but a cautionary tale in the sense of speak up for yourself. Be your own self-advocate. Don't let them push you around like they did with me. Know your rights. Don't let what happened to me happen to you. That's what I really want to happen. 

CV: What's your next book? 

RLD: I'm working on a military fiction novel. I really want to get to my urban fantasy, but I started looking around at modern war novels and I couldn't find very many that were written about women, by women, especially by women veterans. You see all these books written by men and there's nothing wrong with that. But I thought the lack of female voice made it seem like we weren't there. It continues to make women service members sort of invisible and unseen in the war. We were there. We experienced things too. 

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