100 Worldwide BIPOC Woman Leaders in History
World Brave Sis: 100 Dreamtime Dialogues with Women Who Led the Way is a follow up/companion to my Nautilus Award-winning book Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History (Workman/Hachette, 2023).
Where my first book provided introductions to the lives of 100 American woman, this tome is entirely different. Through these stories, I am honored to enter into an intimate, inspiring, and informative dialogue showcasing the essence and voice of these women. Speaking candidly about their lives, thoughts, and actions, they evoke a bold "she-roism": not just through their confrontations with the contexts and morés during which they lived, but with a time-traveling view cast upon ways our world has changed since then (as well as the work still to be done.)
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Some "imagined interviews" are derived from well-documented lives, others are “composite narratives” gleaned from composites of what their story might have been based on the culture and norms of the time, but for whom there is no or scant “historic record.” Hence, this remarkable narrative compendium is part cultural-history book, part historical fiction, with “dreamed” psychic channeling, part righting of historic "wrongs" and erasures, with a few memoir-esque insertions from time to time, when the woman's story of country is connected to someone I've known over the course of my life. I have met a lot of amazing people from around the world, so this is for them and you, and us all.
Think “James” (by Percival Everett) meets Oprah, with a splash of Christiane Amanpour and Hey Girl Podcast.
Read the Draft Introduction
Ever since I founded Brave Sis Project in 2019, I always knew I wanted to pivot to tell a story about Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous women from outside of the United States. My entire life has been that of a citizen-historian, amateur cultural ethnographist, story-weaver, and friend. I long to travel, not just to countries I may never have the privilege and honor to visit, but also back in time, to contexts that were heroic — maybe only in retrospect. Because after all, much of life is about just doing the daily doings, keeping one foot in front of the other. So many of these women were not seeking out to be superheroes, or memorialized in this anthology. They just wanted to make things a little better. (Read More...)
Sample Chapter
There is so much history of the world, even within the lifetimes of some of us, that we have simply never been exposed to, and uncovering and making sense of it through the eyes of the cultural foremothers is an incredible experience for me, as a creator. To allow the spirit of each woman to "enter" me in constructing the arc of each dialog is an unbelievable privilege, and I hope to convey their spirit, forgiveness, and wisdom. I want to give each woman an opportunity to provide some "ancestral perspective" about life's struggles and triumphs, from "beyond what we, the living, can understand." It is the most exciting project I have ever created!
Read two sample interviews: one from Cambodia's historic queen and the other from the "Mother of the Country" of São Tomé and Principe.
Roll Call: the 100 Women
Roll Call: the 100 Women
Roll Call: the 100 Women
Honestly, each woman's story is so important, it may end up being two or three volumes. See whose stories await here.
Support and/or Represent
Roll Call: the 100 Women
Roll Call: the 100 Women
You can help support the creation of this book by buying me a smoothie.
I am also seeking literary representation. contact me at hello@bravesis.com!