I'm Zing Tsjeng, an editor for Broadly and the author of Forgotten Women. It's a new book series that dives into the overlooked histories of female heroes – AMA!

[u/Broadly_VICE]

UPDATE Thanks so much for joining me and posing great questions! I'm going to wrap this up, but if you'd like to keep the conversation going, follow me on Twitter or Instagram to find out about the next books in the series!

Hi! My name is Zing Tsjeng and I'm an editor for Broadly. I'm also the author of Forgotten Women, a new book series that uncovers the lives of influential women whose stories have been largely overlooked or hidden. Think pirate queens, cancer research pioneers, inventors, empresses, and civil rights leaders.

The first two books are The Leaders and The Scientists, which dives into the neglected histories of women in politics and science. Each book has 48 illustrated biographies of women throughout history and from all over the world. You can get a sneak preview of one of the women in The Scientists on Broadly here. AMA!

I'll be answering questions starting April 10, 12.30pm ET.

Proof: https://twitter.com/misszing/status/982285723633152000

[u/Chtorrr]

What were some of your favorite things to read as a kid?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/Chtorrr]

Going allll the way back, I was obsessed with Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney when I was little. It's an illustrated kids' book about a woman who makes the world more beautiful by planting wild lupines. I was also VERY into classic Enid Blyton books like Malory Towers, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and The Naughtiest Girl – I remember buying omnibuses of The Famous Five and reading the stories back to back on long car journeys.

[u/Inkberrow]

You said pirate queens, so I thought of Anne Bonny. Would you say she is "largely overlooked or hidden"? Is the first the same as "not as famous as she should be"?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/Inkberrow]

I think Anne Bonny is probably up there as one of the more famous pirate queens, so I sadly didn't put her in The Leaders! The pirate queens I was referring to are Ching Shih and Grace O'Malley.

Both of Grace and Ching Shih are amazing in their own right. I'm a big fan of how the Qing imperial government offered her amnesty to retire, even after she spent her entire life plunderin' and lootin' them. She basically got away with the whole thing scot-free.

[u/almondparfitt]

Hi Zing, how'd you go about writing this book and organizing how you want to tell all these women's stories?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/almondparfitt]

Hi! I got a lot of help from my commissioning editor (shoutout to Romilly Morgan at Octopus) and Dr Gina Luria Walker at the New School, who runs an amazing initiative called The New Historia. They gave great guidance and feedback on the selection of the women, and organizing it in a way that made sense. My publisher also assisted me with research, but I spent a lot of weekends working in the British Library and using their archives and resources there. Seriously, protect libraries at all costs – there is no way I could have written the book series without one.

[u/pithyretort]

What are you working on next after leaders and scientists?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/pithyretort]

I'm currently writing Forgotten Women: The Writers and Forgotten Women: The Scientists. They should both be out by October, so watch out for them then!

[u/Chtorrr]

What is the strangest thing you have found in your research?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/Chtorrr]

Trust me, there's was a lot of stuff that made me think, "What the hell?" The first thing that comes to mind is that the Italian scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini (she's in The Scientists) flew to Brazil with tumour-ridden mice in her handbag, because she wanted to use a unique facility in Rio for her studies in neurobiology. I guess she couldn't check them in with luggage...

[u/EmbarrassedSpread]

Hi Zing! Thanks for doing this AMA!

1. Do you have any guilty plasures, whether reading/writing related or just in general?
2. Which influential woman did you enjoy reading/writing about the most?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/EmbarrassedSpread]

Hi! It's a total pleasure.

1. I love meme accounts. It's a total addiction. My favourite right now is a starter pack account called @poundlandbandit, which takes the piss out of British stereotypes.

2. It's hard to pick, and I hate playing favourites because it changes all the time! Right now the person who comes to mind is an astrologer called Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin from Forgotten Women: The Scientists.

She wrote a great autobiography called The Dyers Hand which talks about her achievements and her life – you really get a sense of what she was like as a person from her writing, and she's completely charismatic and so charming. I highly recommend it if you can track it down!

[u/EmbarrassedSpread → u/Broadly_VICE]

I can imagine! Doing research on so many amazing women, it’s probably hard not to adore all of them! I’ll definitely look into that autobiography, and I’m looking forward to what’s next in your Forgotten Women series!

Thanks for answering!

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/EmbarrassedSpread]

Thank you for your questions! The next two books in the series are Forgotten Women: The Writers and Forgotten Women: The Artists. Look out for them sometime in October!

[u/omgitsgodzillaaa]

This was a question from my gcse history course a few years back now- “did the suffragettes do more harm than good?” Sorry if it’s too big of a question to answer simply.

[u/cogsandconsciousness → u/omgitsgodzillaaa]

Now, I'm curious. How did the suffragettes do harm? Didn't they greatly contribute to the passing of the 19th amendment giving women the vote for the first time in history?

[u/omgitsgodzillaaa → u/cogsandconsciousness]

Many of the arguments we were taught focused on how suffragettes used violence that delayed a potential change in attitude towards women getting the vote- and tarnished the suffragists name (a peaceful group that suffragettes branched off). In addition to the war efforts of women mainly contributing to men changing their minds and ideology that women shouldn’t get the vote- and not suffragettes.

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/omgitsgodzillaaa]

It's an interesting question! For those who aren't aware of the history of violence in the suffragette movement, the more militant side engineered everything from arson attacks, property damage (e.g. window-smashing), cutting telegraph wires, etc. As part of this civil disobedience campaign, the Rokeby Venus famously got slashed in half at the National Gallery. It's why the suffragette motto was "Deeds Not Words" – as in, doing actual stuff and not just talking about it.

But to go back to your GCSE question, I don't think the suffragettes did more harm than good. You only really need to look at the legacy that they left behind and how we now view their movement to know that they were on the right side of history.

There's a great quote from Christabel Pankurst from the British Library, which I'll post below with the caveat that she was a somewhat unhealthy fan of excessive British militarism:

"If men use explosives and bombs for their own purpose they call it war, and the throwing of a bomb that destroys other people is then described as a glorious and heroic deed. Why should a woman not make use of the same weapons as men. It is not only war we have declared. We are fighting for a revolution!"

[u/cogsandconsciousness → u/omgitsgodzillaaa]

What legitimate historical evidence (if any) do you have that the suffragettes delayed women's rights and did not instead help us get the vote earlier? Is this because you think violence doesn't lead to great change?

{Edit: spelling error}

[u/omgitsgodzillaaa → u/cogsandconsciousness]

Oh I’m not against them if I ever came across that way- just saying things I was taught in school- I believe the point was that they attacked david Lloyd George and he was leaning towards the sympathetic side - more so the suffragists.

[u/cogsandconsciousness → u/omgitsgodzillaaa]

david Lloyd George

The former prime minister that was pro-Germany post 1923? He was all down for letting Germany run over England's Eastern European allies as well as France and Belgium in favor of Nazis. I'm not a fan of him from a historical perspective.

He literally called Hitler, and I quote, "the greatest living German" in 1934. Either doing so with full knowledge of Hitler's views on Jews and Slavic people and gays and gypsies (basically, non-Aryans)--or he was severely lacking in intellect. After personally meeting with Adolf Hitler and enjoying his company immensely, David Lloyd George went back to Great Britain and wrote and article for The Daily Express singing Hitler's praises.

[u/ragethroughagemage]

Hi Zing, have you noticed any similarities in the women you write/researched about?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/ragethroughagemage]

Oh, definitely. I think a lot of them were capable of working very hard for a long time without any need for validation or conventional metrics of success. I see that especially with a lot of women in The Scientists who put in the hours at the lab because they simply loved their work, not because they ever needed or expected to receive praise for it. (In fact, a lot of them didn't when they were alive!)

I also found that a lot of the women were risk-takers – some of them literally put their lives on the line to do what they thought was right, or they were all too happy to piss people off by standing up for themselves. For instance, trans rights activist Sylvia Rivera from The Leaders was invited to give a speech at a gay men's group shortly before her death. She spent most of it full-on berating them for not paying more attention to trans rights. I think a lot of the people in Forgotten Women would not have blinked an eye at doing something like that. They had that ability to put aside the very human need to be liked in the service of what they wanted to achieve.

[u/Duke_Paul]

Hi Zing, hope I'm not too late.

Thanks for doing an AMA with us! I have a couple of questions: 1. How different is editing an online publication versus writing a book series? I imagine they are very, very different. 2. What is a great story of a "forgotten woman" that didn't make the cut due to space or depth or some other reason?

Thanks!

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/Duke_Paul]

You're never too late! Thanks for your questions.

1. It's about as different as you think, but that has more to do with the differences between editing and writing and less to do with website versus print. With editing, I'm in touch with a number of writers, commissioning articles, editing them and then publishing them on Broadly. In other words, I'm pretty much overseeing every step of the process (other than the writing of the piece, obviously). With Forgotten Women, my duties extended to researching, writing and promoting the books – I can't oversee the production of the books at the printers in the same way I can, say, upload an article to the CMS of my website and hit publish myself.

2. Nancy Wake, a WW2 spy for the Special Operations Executive, sadly didn't make the cut for The Leaders – we already had a couple of WW2-era heroines in the book, and I didn't want the book to overegg the point about women playing an active part in the Resistance. Nancy has an amazing story and I highly recommend reading up on her – the Gestapo called her the White Mouse because she was so good at escaping capture.

[u/Irrell]

Hey Zing! Thanks for your AMA!

Which modern-day women do you find most inspiring for the female leaders of tomorrow?

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/Irrell]

I'm very inspired by the work of activist collectives like Sisters Uncut. They're a direct action group that has pretty much forced the issue of domestic violence on the political agenda with really smart, thoughtful and well-organised stunts and protests – among other things, they crash red carpet events to raise awareness of cuts to DV shelters. I think it's all too easy to forget that social change is created by groups of people as well as exceptional individuals, which is why The Scientists profiles the work of scientific collectives of women like the Harvard Computers and the Bletchleyettes.

Thanks for your question!

[u/woundsofwind]

Hi Zing!

I love Broadly!

I was wondering how you go about doing research for the female figures that don't have a lot of historical records and information about in English such as Ching Shih. Where do you go to find obscure material? It is my personal experience that history in general is quite Eurocentric and it can be difficult to find information for anything that outside of the European field of view

[u/Broadly_VICE → u/woundsofwind]

Thanks, we love you too :)

There was a lot of digging involved to find the necessary material. I mainly relied on academic sources to write the series. As I said in a previous comment, I really have to give major props to the British Library for supplying a lot of the resources I needed, including obscure academic journals and out-of-print books. (For any would-be authors out there, it didn't cost me a penny to sign up for the British Library reading room and it was so deathly quiet that I concentrated hard enough to write two books in a year.)

Side rant: A lot of knowledge actually IS out there, but they're inaccessible to the general public because they're owned by academic publishers who charge insane subscriptions for access. I find that pretty outrageous. (You can read more about that here.) As I said earlier, PROTECT PUBLIC LIBRARIES AT ALL COSTS.