Who says women don’t go to war? From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, these are the stories of women for whom battle was not a metaphor. The woman warrior is always cast as an anomaly—Joan of Arc, not GI Jane. But women, it turns out, have always gone to war. In this fascinating and lively world history, Pamela Toler not only introduces us to women who took up arms, she also shows why they did it and what happened when they stepped out of their traditional female roles to take on other identities. These are the stories of women who fought because they wanted to, because they had to, or because they could. Among the warriors you’ll meet are: * Tomyris, ruler of the Massagetae, who killed Cyrus the Great of Persia when he sought to invade her lands * The West African ruler Amina of Hausa, who led her warriors in a campaign of territorial expansion for more than 30 years * Boudica, who led the Celtic tribes of Britain into a massive rebellion against the Roman Empire to avenge the rapes of her daughters * The Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, who led an untrained army of 80,000 troops to drive the Chinese empire out of Vietnam * The Joshigun, a group of 30 combat-trained Japanese women who fought against the forces of the Meiji emperor in the late 19th century * Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi, who was regarded as the “bravest and best” military leader in the 1857 Indian Mutiny against British rule * Maria Bochkareva, who commanded Russia’s first all-female battalion—the First Women’s Battalion of Death—during WWII * Buffalo Calf Road Woman, the Cheyenne warrior who knocked General Custer off his horse at the Battle of Little Bighorn * Juana Azurduy de Padilla, a mestiza warrior who fought in at least 16 major battles against colonizers of Latin America and who is a national hero in Bolivia and Argentina today * And many more spanning from ancient times through the 20th century. By considering the ways in which their presence has been erased from history, Toler reveals that women have always fought—not in spite of being women but because they are women.

Davis-Kimball weaves science, mythology and mystical cultures into a bold new historical tapestry of female warriors, heroines and leaders who have been left out of the history books-- until now.

The WomenÕs Warrior Society is a remarkable gathering of characters and voices used to expose truths about Native American life. In tightly woven prose, Lois Beardslee tells stories about people from all over North America and from either side of the line between abused and abuser. Both individual and archetypal, Native and non-Native, male and female, her characters take up arms against widely accepted stereotypes about Native people. The women warriors in these tales have lived through a variety of mishaps, experiencing the consequences brought on by misinformation and the misguided efforts of institutions and individuals. Armed with this experience, they gather in unlikely ÒsweatlodgesÓÑfrom kitchen tables to public librariesÑtransforming into she-wolves who, lips curled, snarl at their own victimization and assert that hope for future generations is maintained through creativity, determination, and the preservation of traditional values. This is political writing at its most honest and creative. BeardsleeÕs style is poetic and lyrical, and her voice, shifting as it does, both grips us with terrible tone and comforts us with familiar assurance. A fierce call to action, this book reads like a song cycleÑboth singing to us and demanding that we sing in response. Beardslee creates new strategies and measures of success. Her warriors dance, bark, howl, and transform themselves in unexpected ways that invoke tears, laughter, even awe. They are, above all, driven, successful, and eternally hopeful.

The classic hero of myth and legend is defined in masculine terms, but to judge a woman by the strengths and virtues of the typical male hero does her an injustice. The hero of "When Women Were Warriors" becomes a hero by learning to master herself and to understand the human heart.

Women Warriors in Romantic Drama advances scholarship on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theater by bringing together, for the first time, female and male dramatists as well as British, German, Irish, and French writers, thinkers, actors, and philosophers. This transnational perspective allows Women Warriors in Romantic Drama to make the provocative claim that in some instances, the violence of the French Revolution--and especially women's participation in it--advances proto-feminist concerns.

An anthropologist tells the history of women in battle from Cleopatra and Joan of Arc to Thusnelda, the Teutonic warrior, and the twentieth century's Ming Khai

Hers is one of eleven essays and four poems included in this volume in which Latina women of African descent share their stories. The authors included are from all over Latin America-Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Puerto Rico, Venezuela-and the United States. They write about the African diaspora and issues such as colonialism, oppression and disenfranchisement. Diva Moreira, a Brazilian, writes that she experienced racism and humiliation at a very young age. The worst experience, she remembers, was her mother's bosses' conviction that Diva didn't need to go to school after the fourth grade, "because blacks don't need to study more than that."