New Books in Women's History

After the Buddha’s enlightenment, his aunt and adoptive mother, Mahapajapati Gotami, asks him to ordain women and welcome them into his new monastic community. The Buddha declines to fulfill her request. But Mahapajapati Gotami doesn’t give up—accompanied by a large gathering of women, she sets out to ask him again.In her new book, The Gathering: A Story of the First Buddhist Women (Equinox, 2023), scholar Vanessa R. Sasson offers an imaginative retelling of the women’s request for ordination, following the women as they travel through the forest together seeking full access to the Buddha’s teachings. Building on decades of research and drawing from the poems of the Therigatha, the novel explores how the women navigate the paradox of seeking ultimate liberation while still bound by social inequality.In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sasson to discuss what we can learn from the first Buddhist women’s resilience, how contemporary women monastics understand this story, why she first started writing fiction, and the role of mythology and storytelling in the Buddhist world.Tricycle Talks is a monthly podcast featuring prominent voices from within and beyond the Buddhist fold. Listen to more episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1980s, she attributed her comeback to one thing: the wisdom and power she found in Buddhism. Her spiritual transformation is often overshadowed by the rags-to-riches arc of her life story. But in this groundbreaking biography, Ralph H. Craig III traces Tina's journey from the Black Baptist church to Buddhism and situates her at the vanguard of large-scale movements in religion and pop culture.Paying special attention to the diverse metaphysical beliefs that shaped her spiritual life, Craig untangles Tina's Soka Gakkai Buddhist foundation; her incorporation of New Age ideas popularized in '60s counterculture; and her upbringing in a Black Baptist congregation, alongside the influences of her grandmothers' disciplinary and mystical sensibilities. Through critical engagement with Tina's personal life and public brand, Craig sheds light on how popular culture has been used as a vehicle for authentic religious teaching. Scholars and fans alike will find Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner (Eerdmans, 2023) as enlightening as the iconic singer herself.When Tina Turner reclaimed her throne as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the 1980s, she attributed her comeback to one thing: the wisdom and power she found in Buddhism. Her spiritual transformation is often overshadowed by the rags-to-riches arc of her life story. But in this groundbreaking biography, Ralph H. Craig III traces Tina’s journey from the Black Baptist church to Buddhism and situates her at the vanguard of large-scale movements in religion and pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Alice Collett’s monograph Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns: Biographies as History (Oxford University Press, 2016) delves into the lives of six of the best-known nuns from the period of early Buddhism: Dhammadinnā, Khemā, Kisāgotamī, Paṭācārā, Bhaddā Kuṇḍalakesā, and Uppalavaṇṇā, all of whom are said to have been direct disciples of the historical Buddha. Collett does the thankless task of sorting through the biographical information scattered throughout the canonical and commentarial literature to present a richly textured account of the these six extraordinary women’s lives. She further analyzes the differences between the various biographical accounts to glean historical information about the position of women and changing gender relations in the early centuries of Buddhism in India. One of the main contributions of her monograph is the finding that women were treated more favorably in the Pāli Canon than is commonly presented. She also gains insight into an impressive number of other themes ranging from notions of beauty and bodily adornment, to family, class, and marriage. This book is sure to be of value to a wide audience, especially those interested in women in Buddhism, early Buddhism and early Indian society.Alex Carroll studies Buddhist Studies at the University of South Wales and is primarily interested in Theravāda and early Buddhism. He lives in Oslo, Norway and can be reached via his website here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Analysing materials from literature and film, this book considers the fates of women who did not or could not buy into the Japanese imperial ideology of "good wives, wise mothers" in support of male empire-building.Although many feminist critics have articulated women's active roles as dutiful collaborators for the Japanese empire, male-dominated narratives of empire-building have been largely supported and rectified. In contrast, the roles of marginalized women, such as sex workers, women entertainers, hostesses, and hibakusha have rarely been analyzed. This book addresses this intellectual lacuna by closely examining memories, (semi-)autobiographical stories, and newspaper articles, grounded or inspired by lived experiences not only in Japan, but also in Shanghai, Manchukuo, colonial Korea, and the Pacific. Chapters further explore the voices of diasporic Korean women (Zainichi Korean woman born in Japan, as well as Korean American woman born in Korea) whose lives were impacted, intervening ethnocentric narratives that were at the heart of the Japanese empire. An appendix presents the first English translation of a memorable statement on comfort women by former Japanese propaganda actress, Ri Kōran / Yamaguchi Yoshiko.Nobuko Ishitate-Okunomiya Yamasaki's book Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire (Routledge, 2021) will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and film studies, as well as gender, sexuality and postcolonial studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Women’s college basketball is big business—top teams bring in millions of dollars in revenue for their schools. Women’s NCAA games are broadcast regularly on sports networks, and many of the top players and coaches are household names. Yet these athletes face immense pressure to be more than successful at their sport. They must also conform to expectations about gender, sexuality, and race—expectations that are often in direct contrast to success in the game. They are not supposed to have muscles that are too big, they are not supposed to be too tough, they are not supposed to be too masculine or “look like men,” and they are not supposed to be queer.A former college athlete herself, Michelle J. Manno spent a full season with a highly competitive NCAA Division I women’s basketball program as one of the team’s managers. In vivid detail, she takes us on the court, on the team bus, into the locker room, and to championship games to show the intense dedication that these women give to the game. She found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that these extremely talented women were strictly policed around the presentation of their gender and sexuality, especially the athletes who were Black. They were routinely monitored, banned from engaging in certain activities, and often punished for behavior that put their queerness, Blackness, and masculinity on display. Convincingly conforming to conventional expectations of gender and sexuality—from the clothes they wore to the people they dated—was yet another challenge at which they needed to excel. Importantly, Manno also highlights several well-known contemporary professional athletes—Brittney Griner, Serena Williams, Gabby Douglas, and Caster Semenya, among others—to show that fame and performing at the highest levels in sport does not protect women athletes from having to navigate the conflicting and often contradictory expectations of identity.A riveting portrait of an elite basketball program, Denied: Women, Sports, and the Contradictions of Identity (NYU Press, 2023) will forever change our understanding of women athletes and the sports they play.Jane Scimeca is Professor of History at Brookdale Community College. @JaneScimeca1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the French government cultivated images of sensual and sophisticated white French women in an attempt to reestablish its global image as a great nation. They promoted the beauty, sexual appeal, and general allure of French women, all while shrinking the boundaries of what was considered beautiful.Charm Offensive: Commodifying Femininity in Postwar France (University of Toronto Press, 2023) by Dr. Kelly Colvin explores how this elevation of French femininity created problems on both sides of the equation: the pressure on French women to conform to an exacting physical standard was immense, while the inability of anyone else to access that standard resulted in a sense of failure. Drawing on cultural figures like Air France hostesses, tourism workers, and celebrities such as Brigitte Bardot, Charm Offensive offers an innovative understanding of a tumultuous time of decolonization.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Animal products were used extensively in nineteenth-century Britain. A middle-class Victorian woman might wear a dress made of alpaca wool, drape herself in a sealskin jacket, brush her hair with a tortoiseshell comb, and sport feathers in her hat. She might entertain her friends by playing a piano with ivory keys or own a parrot or monkey as a living fashion accessory.In Victims of Fashion: Animal Commodities in Victorian Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Helen Cowie examines the role of these animal-based commodities in Britain in the long nineteenth century and traces their rise and fall in popularity in response to changing tastes, availability, and ethical concerns. Focusing on six popular animal products – feathers, sealskin, ivory, alpaca wool, perfumes, and exotic pets – she considers how animal commodities were sourced and processed, how they were marketed and how they were consumed. Dr. Cowie also assesses the ecological impact of nineteenth-century fashion.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In August, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter to complain about how U.S. regulations are holding local sunscreens back compared to the rest of the world. And while she didn’t name any specific country, the video featured headlines that did name one nation: South Korea. On social media, Korean cosmetics are now viewed as the world’s best.But where did this success come from—and, perhaps, what does it say about South Korea? Elise Hu, during her time in South Korea, tried to find out, researching and reporting on not just the cosmetics industry, but gender politics, the culture of lookism, K-Pop, and cosmetic surgery, all covered in her latest book Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital (Dutton, 2023)In this interview, Elise and I talk about South Korea, its world-leading cosmetics industry, and what that says about gender and lookism in this buzzing East Asian economy.Elise Hu is a correspondent and host at-large for NPR, the American news network; and since April 2020, the inaugural host of TED Talks Daily, the daily podcast from TED that’s downloaded a million times a day in all countries of the world. For nearly four years, she was the NPR bureau chief responsible for coverage of North Korea, South Korea, and Japan.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Flawless. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania (University of California Press, 2020) is a gripping ethnographic account of the deaths of pregnant women in a hospital in a low-resource setting in Tanzania. Through an exploration of everyday ethics and care practices on a local maternity ward, anthropologist Adrienne E. Strong untangles the reasons Tanzania has achieved so little sustainable success in reducing maternal mortality rates, despite global development support. Growing administrative pressures to document good care serve to preclude good care in practice while placing frontline healthcare workers in moral and ethical peril. Maternal health emergencies expose the precarity of hospital social relations and accountability systems, which, together, continue to lead to the deaths of pregnant women.Dr. Nicole Bourbonnais is an Associate Professor of International History and Politics and Co-Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research explores reproductive politics and practice from a transnational historical perspective. More info here. Twitter: @iheid_history and @GC_IHEID Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we are joined by Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff, who is an historian, specializing in global sport, communications and diplomacy. She is also the Director of FranceandUS, and she lectures on sports diplomacy at New York University Tisch Institute of Global Sport. We met to talk about her most recent book: Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA (Bloomsbury, 2023). In our conversation, we discussed the rise of basketball in France, the differences between French and American basketball, and the way that French basketball stars such as Boris Diaw exemplify the new global “empire” of basketball that incorporates Africa, France and its overseas departments, and the USA.Krasnoff divides Basketball Empire into three parts that together investigate how French basketball developed from a low point in the middle of the 20th century to a global powerhouse contributing players to the NBA and the WNBA almost every year. Krasnoff argues that French basketball’s success hinges on their ability make use of their connections both with the United States and with their former empire. In examining the growth of basketball in France, Krasnoff traces a sporting genealogy that links together players, coaches, and even commentators from around the globe who compete together in France and help produce a distinctive French style of basketball that nevertheless has appeal outside of the hexagon.In Basketball Empire, Krasnoff’s first section takes off from her previous work on French association football, which looked at the development of Les Bleus. In the 1950s and 1960s, French basketball too was in crisis. In response, the French government, the Fédération française de basket-ball (FFBB), and even some sporting associations sought out new ways to improve the quality of play in France. Paris University Club brought in Americans who had played basketball in the NCAA but were now living in France to teach American approaches to the game. Individual players, including one of the earliest female French basketball stars Elisabeth Riffiod, watched film of American professionals like Bill Russell. The government redeveloped a national training centre: the National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance (INSEP.) The French League professionalized in 1987. Since the 1990s, French basketball has enjoyed a rising number of successful EuroBasket and Olympic campaigns, including a men’s silver and a women’s bronze in 2020/21.Basketball Empire’s second section uses micro-biographies to explore the ways that contemporary French players developed their skills, how they made their moves into the NCAA, the NBA or the WNBA, and the challenges and opportunities that these moves provided them as players. In this section in particular, Krasnoff’s ability land and conduct interviews shines. She shows how diverse players, including Boris Diaw, Sandrine Gruda, Nicolas Batum, Marine Johannès, Diandra Tchatchouang, Evan Fournier, Mickaël Gelabale, and Rudy Gobert have become not only basketball stars but also informal diplomats that help build connections and translate between Africa, France and the United States.In the final section, Krasnoff considers why the French have been so successful at producing high quality men’s and women’s basketball players. She credits la formation à la française: the specific French training system that includes a national sports training center (the INSEP) as well as local and regional basketball academies (pôles espoirs). The future looks bright for French basketball and in our interview Krasnoff predicts French and US success in the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympiad.Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices