History in the Margins

Three and a half years ago, pen and paper in hand, I sat down to watch Disney’s 1998 animated film Mulan for the first time since it was originally released. I came to the task with some uneasiness. I was in the midst of writing Women Warriors. The historical (or perhaps legendary) figure Mulan is…

Like many of us, I had plans for the hundredth anniversary of the 19th Amendment. One of those plans was to run a series of blog posts about the suffrage movement in July and August. Then my life took a sharp turn: first I wrote a history book for kids in thirty days and then…

One of the major challenges historians face when writing about the lives of non-elite women of the past is the absence of sources. Sources written by men that describe their lives are rare. Those written by the women themselves are rarer yet. Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World, by historian…