Jason Porath

Absolutely wonderful. Jason Porath is not a trained historian and that it makes it all the better. The comprehensive, complex stories are presented without judgment in a beautiful book that can easily be read in self-contained 5 pages each day. It's the sort of book you could read in a day or in a year.

This masterwork is in my lay opinion, a perfect example of the blending of history from multiple sides. It has perfect commentary on what counts as historical fact, what should be considered questionable, and what is clearly historical fiction presented as fact.

The author presents a feminist worldview where notable women are enshrined. The women are complex and full with their successes and flaws on display without judgment. That's simply a quality that is truly rare in accessible historical writing.

Not only is the book a beautiful piece of art, it is in perfectly digestible pieces in its large format pages with each woman occupying 2-5 pages. The thoughtful illustrations are given a full commentary of all the meanings and historical or fictional sources that came together to produce the images. I have never read a book where the author provided several paragraphs of explanations of how their historical renderings came to be.… (más)

Like I mentioned in my previous review of Wonder Women, I love books that are compendiums of stories about different women who have done awe-inspiring things. The biggest selling point of this particular book for me is two fold:

1. The author worked on my favorite animated movie – How to Train Your Dragon and helped bring one of my favorite characters, Astrid, to life! (the cake topper for my wedding was even Astrid & Hiccup!)
2. He included Alfhild, a Viking princess turned pirate and the real life inspiration for the novel I’m writing!

In Rejected Princesses, Porath includes women who are princesses and commoners alike, who hail from all over the world, from all walks of life, of all manner of life experiences. The illustrations of each “princess” are exquisitely designed to highlight their uniqueness and specialties. Porath also designed a rating system for all the women, but not the usual misogynistic rating of hotness, but of the type of life they led, more similar to a movie rating from G to R. In this manner, Porath has ensured that Rejected Princesses can be suitable to all ages and for younger children, parents can determine which stories to share with their children.

So many of the women included would make terrific role models, especially given their diverse backgrounds, for any young woman, or man, and I absolutely cannot wait for a second volume! Porath continues to add new women to the Rejected Princesses‘ website and I hope that he will include them together in a a book just like with this volume!… (más)

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 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)… (más)