Jason Porath

I fell in love with this book immediately, which has never happened to me before. I am not an early adopter, and it's the onus of every book to entice me. Of course, by the time I know that, I'm usually victim to time sink fallacy. But look at this cover. It looks like all the books in the old Disney movies. You know, like in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty where a live-action book opens at the beginning and closes at "the end". Now I have a book like that. I can look like I'm reading an old show more timey volume of forgotten lore (quoth the raven). Look at me -- I'm gushing and I haven't even opened the book yet.

Inside is more than fifty stories of women who kicked ass and took names, folk tales you never heard of, tribal leaders, revolutionaries, women who outrode Paul Revere, outsmarted popes, outbattled kings, and outwitted empires. Each entry is about a page or two, so no princess outstays her welcome. They're like wikipedia entries, but don't duplicate the dry descriptions. Many include anecdotes and details that bring them to life as real people who existed. This is not a research/reference book. It's entertaining and informative like The Daily Show or CGPGrey or Extra Credits. The author adds a unique flavor/voice that gives away how much he loves this subject and how much he wants to share it.

Plus, each entry has a beautiful illustration of the lady therein, rendered as a kind of Dreamworks/Disney princess. Like each woman has her own movie poster. It even includes notes on how the art includes culture and tidbits not in the story.

Now this volume does have a fault: there are maturity ratings and content warnings for each story, ranging from one to five. But even the tamest wasn't appropriate for kids under ten (IMHO). In fact, just about all of them... well, this makes me sound like the most conservative of parents, but they acknowledge the existence of sex, use words like "plastered", and assume some historical knowledge. It's not that the content is vulgar or adult. It just brings up questions that I don't need to answers yet. Which makes it kind of strange that this book wants to highlight famous influential women, but the content is too old for when girls are their most influenced. Maybe they can release a PG version for the younglings? I want them to learn about these people too. The earlier the better. show less

I would have been *obsessed* with a book like this if it had been around when I was about 12. I was the kind of kid who loved Joan of Arc and Hatshepsut. In short, badass ladies. I also loved the macabre, including a fascination with mythology (primarily Greek) and folklore (primarily pirates!). Rejected Princesses is completely packed with an extraordinary number of stories about butt-kicking ladies, with few punches pulled. For those unfamiliar with the series show more (http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/), author Jason Porath has a blog called Rejected Princesses which is focused on "celebrating women of history and myth who were too awesome, awful, or offbeat for the animated princess treatment."

A few notes, which make this book really wonderful.

1) Porath is very funny. His style of writing is very engaging.
2) LOTS of cited sources to check historical accuracy of his work. Plus, he tends to err on the side of caution when writing biographies, disclosing when a particular figure has had a controversial history with unverifiable or conflicting facts.
3) Good representation (I thought) of many different races, nationalities, genders, and sexualities. Plus, so many women I had never heard of!
4) Stories are organized based on maturity, meaning the less violent/"trigger warning" stories are at the front. Ratings are clearly indicated for all stories.
5) I tend to disregard trigger warnings, but if you want them, (especially if kids are reading), this book has them.

The one thing I found frustrating is that this book has no index. Many figures are mentioned repeatedly, (names of women appearing in the book are bolded if those women are mentioned in the bios of other women), but THERE IS NO INDEX. Since the book is organized by maturity level, that means you have to go through allllllll of the names in the table of contents one by one to find a figure. Not to end on a downer, but as this book reads a bit like an encyclopedia, (a wonderful, beautiful encyclopedia), an index is pretty much essential. It's also baffling to me how and why this isn't included when care was taken to color code maturity levels as well as trigger-warnings. But, hey, maybe someone didn't think it was important. Since an index could also be used to not only list figures by name but also by affiliated country or time period, I would strongly suggest its inclusion in a second edition.

I would argue that this book is appropriate for kids, (probably no younger than 12, and even then a mature 12), although there is a fair amount of sex and violence. Because history and people are sexual and violent, really.

Anyway, this is a wonderful book to check out if you are at all interested in the premise, or have read Porath's blog. In a word, it's great. show less

Short form: this book is awesome and every home and classroom should have a copy.

Long form: This was a whim. I just picked it up because it had a fun cover and title, but once I started reading it I couldn’t bear to put it down. The introduction is amusing, the art is spot on, and the stories are delightful. Well, many of them have violence and heinous cruelty, or just plain gore, but Porath forewarns the reader with some very specific codes. And when he’s writing about the evil that is show more lynching he doesn’t shrink from sharing the horror. But also, whenever there is a specific named villain in the piece, he comes up with some amusing expletives. Somehow he manages to hit a sweet spot between maintaining a light tone and historical accuracy, and he manages to do it in both the text and the art. Even when he gives these women enormous Disney eyes he makes sure to get the period details right: you know he isn’t mocking these women, he’s taking them seriously but not striving for an imagined objectivity. And then there are art notes on many of the illustrations, which explain details one might miss and their significance. Dude has found his calling and I hope he sells beaucoup books and can continue to devote his time and energy to the project. I love this like I haven’t loved any history since Lies My Teacher Told Me.

It only just hit me that the reason I loved this book so much was that I really needed to read about kick-ass women who got shit done and had fun and/or really improved their world.

Library copy show less

This was my bedside reading/quick break between articles reading at the beginning of the year/during my first semester. I don't think I really read any other books, other than my textbook, at that time.

So, so many cool women from history to learn about, and all of them just whet the appetite to learn more. Porath provides a robust bibliography with at least a few sources for each woman, so that you can go read more. I'll never have time to do it, considering how many women are in here, but show more it would be possible to, say, do a school report on some of these women by starting out with these sources. The pictures are cute, a lot of them kind of cheeky with the women smiling that manic pixie dream-princess smile even in the midst of chaos around them. They get a bit repetitive, since Porath was going for that generic Disney style, but background details make up for the style stagnation. Porath even includes fun notes flagging details in the pictures that didn't make it into the write up.

It's been a long time since I read this, and while I do think the rating/warning system are brilliant, I did have a few occasions where I didn't quite agree (though that's probably inevitable). The best example I have is a level-1 story in which a woman instructs that the straw costumes being worn by a neighboring tribe (who are, admittedly, invading) should be set on fire. Yikes! That's not in the picture, but it still isn't very nice! Overall, the system is good, though, and a nice addition to a book that could easily be mistaken for a child-friendly book.

Just a quick word of warning, I don't think this would make a good book for young children. Even if Porath does flag which stories would be appropriate for younger children, the format really doesn't lend itself to antsy little kids: there's just one big picture for each woman, accompanied by a page of text. Definitely more for older people to browse than it is for children.

In lieu of a quote roundup, here are some of my favorite "princesses":

> Khutulun (Mongolia)
> Kurmanjan Datka (Kyrgyzstan)
> Tin Hinan (Algeria)
> Sayyida al-Hurra (Morocco)
> Eustaquia de Souza and Ana Lezama de Urinza (Bolivia)
> Mary Bowser (U.S.)
> Josefina "Joey" Guerrero (Philippines)
> Nana Asma'u (Nigeria [Sokoto Caliphate])
> Julie "La Maupin" d'Aubigny (France)
> Josephine Baker (U.S./France)
> Anita Garibaldi (Brazil/Uruguay/Italy)
> Joan of Arc (France)--though I mostly flagged this entry because of my interest in Yolande of Aragon, who I hadn't heard about before
> The Night Witches (USSR) show less