Telling Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Paige Bowers
Paige Bowers first caught my attention because she kept popping up as an interesting voice in the Twitter thread of a mutual friend.
Paige successfully straddles the world between journalism and history—a balancing act that is not as easy as she makes it look. A lifelong Francophile and history buff, she is the author of The General’s Niece: The Little Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France. She is also a a nationally published news and features writer whose work has appeared in TIME, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, People, Allure, Thomson Reuters, Glamour, Pregnancy, AirTran Airways’ Go, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Magazine and Palm Beach Illustrated.
Let’s welcome Paige to Three Questions and An Answer:
Geneviève De Gaulle was well known in France during her lifetime, but is less well known in the modern United States. What led you to write about her life?
I fell down a rabbit hole. At some point in 2014, I came across a news article that said Geneviève De Gaulle would be reburied in the Panthéon, a grand mausoleum in Paris full of great French historical figures, most of them male. The government was honoring her in this way because she was a teenaged resistance heroine during World War II, who later went on to become a champion of women and the poor. For all that I had read in graduate school, I thought I had never come across her name and I wondered why. Turns out, I had come across her name and not realized it. Charles de Gaulle dedicated his war memoirs to his niece, and I breezed right past it as a grad student without stopping at that time to wonder who she was and why he dedicated his memoirs to her. After reading about her Panthéon induction, I set out to tell the story of this little-known de Gaulle, a bookish and incredibly brave young woman who risked her life to free Occupied France.
What’s the last book that blew you away?
There were so many wonderful books published in 2018, it’s hard for me to pick just one. But if I were forced to do it, I’d have to say Mary Gabriel’s NINTH STREET WOMEN took my breath away. It’s a fantastic group biography of Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler, five women who were audacious enough to not only enter, but make a mark in the male-dominated world of abstract painting. At the same time, it is an incisive political, social, and cultural history of the post-World War II period. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, it’s a master class on how great narrative nonfiction should be done. I can’t recommend it enough.
What’s your next book about and when will we see it?
My next book is about Raye Montague, the first person to design a Naval warship by computer. Now, it is no mean feat to make a computer do your bidding. But, that’s only part of why Raye’s story is so special. She grew up in the Jim Crow South, and throughout her life fought racial and gender prejudice so that she could accomplish her dream of becoming an engineer. She was a tough, tender, and brilliant woman with a tremendous sense of humor, and I can’t wait to introduce her to readers. The book is tentatively titled KICK LIKE THE DEVIL. It has no release date yet, but my manuscript deadline is this fall. So, stay tuned!
Here’s my question for you: You just wrote a book about women warriors. Have you started thinking about what your next book might be? If so, what is it?
I’m still at the poking around stage on several ideas. The only things I’m sure of is that it will probably be a work of women’s history, and it will include opinionated footnotes. Like you say, stay tuned!
Want to know more about Paige Bowers and her work?
Check out her website: http://www.paigebowers.com/
Follow her on Twitter: @paigebowers
Come back on Monday for another Telling Women’s History Interview. I’ve got an entire month of some of my favorite history people talking about the work they do and how they do it. Next up: Elizabeth de Wolfe, author of Shaking the Faith and The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories.
Telling Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Jason Porath
I must admit that I fan-girled hard when Jason Porath agreed to be part of this interview series. I’ve followed his work since 2014, when my then agent called him to my attention. Porath’s Rejected Princesses, and its sequel, Tough Mothers, began in a discussion with his Dreamworks’ co-workers over what historical woman was least likely to be the heroine of a children’s animated movie. He discovered that few of his co-workers had heard of historical figures like 17th century Angolan queen Nzinga, who successfully defended her country from the Portuguese, or World War II Soviet tank driver Mariya Oktyabrskaya. (FYI—most of the links in this post are to biographies on the Rejected Princesses website. Because you need to see his work to understand his work.) He set out to change that. The resulting books are collections of carefully researched, smart-mouthed essays about women who exemplify the idea that well-behaved women seldom make history. The essays are illustrated in a style that nods toward Disney princesses without sexualizing their subjects–except in the cases of women whose stories depend on their sexuality.
I am pleased to have him here for what turned out to be Ten Questions and An Answer.
How would you describe your work?
Illustrated histories of women you’ve never heard of, in the style of animated musicals that will never get made.
If you could pick one woman from history to put in every high school history textbook, who would it be?
It would have to be a full, in-depth chapter, but Josephine Baker. Her life covers such a staggering variety of poorly-understood topics (racism, reconstruction, women’s role in WW2), and she’s such an interesting, flawed person, I think it’d alter a lot of people’s understanding of the world to have an in-depth look at her, warts and all — she’s a hard person to really love when you dive into her story’s details. It’s a hard question, though. Mary Harris Jones (aka “Mother Jones”) comes in a close second.
What’s your next project and when will we see it?
Unsure! I’ve been trying to pitch things around but so far nothing to announce.
Do you consider yourself a historian?
No. I do my best, and I try to remain humble about my own failings in the process. As a corollary: I don’t really consider myself to be an artist, either.
What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
Challenging: It’s very hard to adjust for bias in historical documents, and there’s no shortage of people online willing to tell you that you did it wrong.
Exciting: You get to readjust your own perceptions, and it changes your worldview. We’ve all known women can do anything; it’s another thing to know they already have – and have the sources to prove it.
Do you think Women’s History Month is important?
Absolutely, but mostly in the sense that much of women’s history is suppressed history, and everyone should learn about suppressed history.
What was the most surprisingly thing you’ve found doing historical research for your work?
How simplified the images of all historical women are, no matter who’s doing the telling. There’s no shortage of effusive portraits of Ada Lovelace — and rightly so, she was a towering intellect a century ahead of her time — but many do not mention she was an opiate addict who went full mad scientist. Helen Keller was a firebrand socialist as an adult. Amelia Earhart had an open marriage. I don’t think details like these should be excised. Otherwise it puts people on a pedestal, makes them cold and inhuman and untouchable.
Your work is a wonderful combination of art and story. How do you weave the two forms together?
It’s a mix of writing poetry and writing music — knowing what notes to hit for what impact, and whether to convey that through evocative images, simple prose, or whatnot. Just knowing what tool is best for the job at any given point, really.
Your work started from the idea of women who were too bad-ass to be animated movie princesses. At the same time, your work is a smart-mouthed relative of the books designed to show girls role-models. How do you walk the line between shin-kicking and kid-friendly?
I refuse to talk down to children. I’ve never watered down anything I’ve written to make it all-ages friendly. I give content warnings, so people know what they’re about to encounter, but I leave it to the individual to determine what’s kid-friendly, because it’s different for each kid — and honestly, as a random dude with no kids, I shouldn’t really be making that determination for you anyway. I just write the books I wish I’d had as a kid.
You’ve written about a lot of amazing women. Do you have a favorite?
It’s hard to beat Julie d’Aubigny for sheer fun, but for complexity and bravery, it’d have to be Noor Inayat Khan.
When it came time to ask me a question in return, Porath didn’t make it easy:
How do we get more men involved in social justice?
If I could actually answer this one I’d move on to solving world peace, or maybe how to keep curly hair from expanding in humidity. With that caveat, I’ll at least share what I think.
I assume Porath meant white, heterosexual men because most of the men of color and gay men that I know are already involved in social justice issues. That distinction lies at the heart of how we get people involved. People—male, female, and all points in between—tend to get involved in social justice issues when it feels personal. Not necessarily because they have suffered the injustice themselves, but because they have seen someone else suffer it in a way that smacks them in the heart, or the gut, or, in rare cases, the brain.
How do we trigger that empathy? That’s the real question.
Want to know more about Jason Porath and his work?
Check out his website: https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/ , his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rejectedprincesses, and his Tumblr: http://rejectedprincesses.tumblr.com/
Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonporath and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rejectedprincesses/
Come back tomorrow for another Telling Women’s History Interview. I’ve got an entire month of some of my favorite history people talking about the work they do and how they do it. Next up: Paige Bower, author of The General’s Niece.
Telling Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Adrienne Mayor
I first “met” Adrienne Mayor on the late lamented group history blog Wonders & Marvels, which both of us contributed to on a regular basis. I always looked forward to Adrienne’s posts. She wrote about quirky and fascinating topics that straddled the worlds of classical history and history of science: biological warfare in the ancient world, the history of fossil hunters, Aristotle and physiognomy. Over time, she began to share posts about women warriors in the ancient world, hints of what would become The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World.
Mayor is a research scholar in Classics and History of Science, and a 2018-19 Berggruen Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. In addition to The Amazons, she is the author of The Poison King: Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy , which was a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award in 2010, and the recently released Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages and her work is featured on NPR, BBC, History and Smithsonian Channels, New York Times, National Geographic, and other media.
I’m so pleased to have her here for Three Questions and an Answer.
What was the most surprising thing you’ve found doing historical research for your work?
One of the most unexpected things that I discovered in researching The Amazons was the survival of so many names of ancient warrior women from myth, legend, historical accounts, and vase painting inscriptions. I had no idea that so many names of Amazons and Amazon-like women from Greek, Italian, Persian, Egyptian, Caucasian, Eurasian, Central Asian, and Chinese sources had been preserved for over two millennia–more than 200! I devoted an Appendix to listing every name I could turn up, along with the translations. I think this amazing persistence of warrior women’s names is evidence not only of the great popularity of Amazon tales in antiquity, but it also gives us an idea of how many hundreds of stories about bold, fighting women once circulated but are now sadly lost. And who knows, maybe we’ll see a new generation of baby girls with venerable Amazon names!
You end The Amazons with a section on ancient women warriors outside the Greek world. How did you handle the special challenges of researching women outside your area of expertise?
The Amazons Part 4 has four chapters on stories and evidence for warrior women outside the Greco-Roman world, from the Caucasus, Persia, Egypt, North Africa and Arabia across the Central Asian Steppes to India and China. My research into that material only brings the tip of the iceberg to light and that there are many more tales to be told about warlike-women beyond the ancient Mediterranean world. Some of the stories that I recount had only recently been translated from oral traditions. I depended on the expertise of other scholars and benefited from suggestions and information from a great many historians, linguists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and other specialists to bring some of those non-Greek women warriors to light. I’m so grateful to all who shared their knowledge.
You have served as a consultant for a number of film and documentaries. What do you see as the role of film in introducing history to a popular audience?
I think of mythology as a kind of treasury of “cultural dreams” from antiquity and I see movies and TV series as another form of cultural dreams of our own time, often drawing on the past. So I believe that popular film and TV–whether mythic fantasies, historical fictions, or documentary re-creations–can be compelling ways of keeping history alive, bringing historical events and figures to life to new audiences, and encouraging people to learn more. I know that Wonder Woman 2017, especially the first third of the movie depicting a åmarvelous array of Amazons as they trained for battle, led many viewers both male and female, to seek out the real history of warrior women in antiquity. Black Panther’s audacious Dora Milaje “Amazons” (2018) encouraged fans to learn about the female soldiers of Dahomey and warrior queens of Africa. I think film is an excellent gateway to instilling a love of history.
Turning the tables, Adrienne asked me: Your new book Women Warriors describes women at war from antiquity to the present from all around the world. It must have been difficult to decide which individuals to include. Can you tell us about your selection process?
Process may be too grand a word to describe how I chose who to include and who to exclude.
I started collecting stories about women warriors in a casual way in the early 1980s. By the time I was ready to write this book, I had collected references to several hundred women. That number grew to several thousand as I worked on the project. Obviously I had to make some hard choices. These were the main criteria that I worked with:
- Women had to have been part of an army, served as what the modern American military calls a combatant commander, or physically wielded a weapon, even if that meant throwing rocks down from the wall of a besieged city.
- There had to be some reason to believe she actually existed, even if she acquired some mythical elements over time.
- I wanted women from a variety of time periods, cultures, and social standing. (In other words, not just women from Western Europe and not just queens and their equivalents.)
(Occasionally I fudged on the first two criteria when it was necessary to make a point.)
After that it was a question of how the stories fit together in each section—a process that is more art than science.
Want to know more about Adrienne Mayor and her work?
Check out her website: https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Mayor.html
Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/amayor
Join her Facebook group: Amazons Ancient and Modern https://www.facebook.com/groups/ancientamazons/
(Come back tomorrow for another Telling Women’s History Interview. I’ve got an entire month of some of my favorite history people talking about the work they do and how they do it. Next up: Jason Porath, creator of Rejected Princesses.)