"I Will Not Bow My Head dispels the myth that women are submissive and nonpolitical. 21 short lessons offer more than 60 primary source documents that shout female defiance throughout history. Among the powerful selections are accounts of Hortensia's tax protest before the Roman Forum, uprisings against the Han dynasty Chinese by Vietnam's Trung sisters, demonstrations by Nigerian market women against British rule, and resistance fighter Vladka Meed in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising."
- School Social Studies Service

"I Will Not Bow My Head" is one of the most useful one-volume collections for classroom use and is appropriate at more than one grade level."
- California Department of Education, Grade Ten Course Models, 1995.

Lyn Reese, I Will Not Bow My Head: Documenting Women's Political Resistance in World History. Berkeley, California: Women in the World Curriculum Resource Project, 1995. 112 pp., illus., maps, pb., $16.95.

Lyn Reese has published a number of volumes in her continuing efforts to make materials on women's history available to classroom teachers. I Will Not Bow My Head, Lyn's most recent work, is an anthology of sixty documents detailing efforts by women from ancient Rome to the 1930s to "stand up for their rights and beliefs." It is handsomely produced with illustrations and maps.

Lyn begins by stating that "students commonly believe that in the past women have been passive, submissive, and nonpolitical. Yet in practically every historical period, primary source documents reveal females whose defiant acts impacted their societies in significant ways." Lyn's compilation offers a rich collection of examples of women demanding the right to be heard and to control their own property, as well as women who led native resistance against colonial domination.

While some of these women, such as Elizabeth I of England, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the militant suffragettes, are well known in the West, the book has many examples from other parts of the world. These include warrior women from ancient Vietnam, medieval Japan, and revolutionary Mexico, as well as feminists from modern China, Japan, and Egypt.

Entries include not only a document, most often the in woman's own words, but also explanatory material and suggested discussion questions, bibliographical references, and activities for students. The most interesting entries are those in which more than one account of a woman's activities is included, so that students can see how differently women and their opponents saw their actions.

In some cases, by necessity, the documents about the women are at some remove from the events they describe. For example, the Trung sisters of Vietnam lived in the first century C.E., but the earliest account of their activities dates from the thirteenth century. The Nigerian Women's War of 1929 is represented by a passage from a novel. Lakshkmibai, the Maharani of Jhansi, is described by popular songs and poems. Nonetheless, the fact that the exploits of these women captured the imagination of those who kept their memory alive is an important historical consideration that students could discuss as part of their study of these women.

This collection of materials does not present a narrative of women's resistance or a theory of such actions, but it does provide a number of striking examples of women's individual or collective actions in defense of their beliefs and freedoms in a wide variety of settings. The stories of these women offer students, and adults as well, evidence that women from many cultures and from different places in the social spectrum of their societies have had the courage to stand up for themselves-setting examples for the reader to admire and emulate.

-Ellen Huppert
Institute of Historical Study Newsletter

 Lyn Reese's I Will Not Bow My Head: Documenting Women's Political Resistance in World History

This curriculum resource project uses primary sources to introduce students to political action by women in various time periods and countries. These are first person accounts, interviews, excerpts from novels, poems, journal selections, and petitions. Many of the sources are from the vantage points of women, but others are included to help students understand the historical context.

The primary sources are contained within short lessons. Each lesson offers background information that is followed up with discussion questions and suggested activities or research possibilities. Each primary source lesson is tied to a period or topic that would be taught in a world history class. For example, Queen Elizabeth's speech at Tilbury is analyzed as an example of the dilemmas and strengths of a woman ruler; the impact of the failure of the Armada is the historical context for the lesson.

Other examples of lessons and the use of primary sources include samurai women in Medieval Japan, the "First Wave Feminists," 1878-1927 in Japan, the Women's War and the British in Nigeria and Qiu-Jin, China, 18751907. These are just a few of the twenty- two topics and over sixty primary sources in this resource manual. The sources are short enough for students to read and long enough for the context and meaning to be possible._

It is highly recommended for inclusion in a world history course.

- Gloria S. Sesso
OHT Newsletter
Organization of History Teachers