Women Warriors and National Heroes

Book excerpt: "This volume presents women warriors and hero cults from a number of cultures since the early modern period. The first truly global study of women warriors, individual chapters examine figures such as Joan of Arc in Cairo, revenging daughters in Samurai Japan, a transgender Mexican revolutionary and WWII Chinese spies. Exploring issues of violence, gender fluidity, memory and nation-building, the authors discuss how these real or imagined female figures were constructed and deployed in different national and transnational contexts. Divided into four parts, they explore how women warriors and their stories were created, consider the issue of the violent woman, discuss how these female figures were gendered, and highlight the fate of women warriors who live on. The chapters illustrate the ways in which female fighters have figured in nation-building stories and in the ordering or re-ordering of gender politics, and give the history of women fighters a critical edge. Exploring women as military actors, women after war, and the strategic use of women's stories in national narratives, this intellectually innovative volume provides the first global treatment of women warriors and their histories."--