It's Vietnam Women's Day today (International Women's Day is also celebrated, but in March, as everywhere else.)  So to mark the day, here’s something about one of the many notable women in Vietnam's history.

Nguyễn Thị Duệ was born in the late sixteenth century, under the Mạc dynasty.  I don't know her parentage, but her name suggests that ( Read more... )

The banners in the street tell me it's the 107th annual International Women's Day - warm greetings, all international women!

To mark the day, I went to a theatre show last night based on the eighteenth-century Story of Kieu - or on part of it, because it's a long story, covering fifteen years of the protagonist's various struggles against a very ( Read more... )

The stuff that's happening in the US - I don't know what to say.  There are so many things happening so fast - and as
( Read more... )

The remarkable women I didn't manage to write about yesterday, and one extra!

The Poet: Hồ Xuân Hương lived in a highly literary, politically tumultuous, patriarchal culture, in late eighteenth-century/early nineteenth century Vietnam. She married twice, the second time as a 'second wife' or concubine to the provincial governor; a position she ( Read more... )

Warm greetings to you all, this International Women's Day. Celebrating awesome women,but also proclaiming the right of all women to a fair go, to freedom, and to decent, safe working conditions.

Time has got away from me (what, again?) and I have no long learned post about admirable women to offer, nor especially useful comments to make.

Short notes ( Read more... )

Does anyone know where is a recent/current prompt-gathering with a history theme? I saw it in a distracted moment recently, and posted a prompt for Anne of Brittany, and now I don't know where to look for it. (Now answered, thanks to
( Read more... )

So much is happening!  For starters, the wonderful
( Read more... )

asakiyume has posted on LJ to say that Irom Sharmila Chanu has arrived in Delhi for trial on the charge of attempting suicide - but what she is actually doing is hunger-striking to protest the appalling ( Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 )

This first is very, very sad, but it is also a true story, of a woman who died as part of the struggle against Nazism.  I'm putting it up not that I've anything much to say except how hideously sad war is, and how amazing this woman was.  And that her story needs to be more widely known. (But seriously, not a post to be reading if you're not ( Read more... )

There are at least three real, serious things I should be doing, besides playing on the internet (and that doesn't count the NFE, which still stretches out like the Uncrossable Swamp).

But I couldn't not share this story of awesome courage and just keeping going, from India.

And while I'm about it, this latest update in the long story of Irom ( Read more... )