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This month's sponsor: CELESTIAL PICTURES
For the next month, you'll be getting twice-weekly illustrations from RP. Half of those will be pioneering butt-kicking ladies of the early martial arts movies of the Shaw Brothers.
The 14 Amazons (1972)
When virtually all their family's male heirs were wiped out, the 14 widows of the Yang clan did not mourn. They did not hide. They got revenge.
My Young Auntie (1981)
What happens when you mix a screwball comedy, a fish-out-of-water story, and a hysterically overpowered martial arts heroine? My Young Auntie, my favorite Shaw Brothers movie.
Come Drink With Me (1966)
One of the great early entries of martial arts cinema, this movie stars -- to the bafflement of its villains and possibly its audience -- one of the most legendary female kung fu stars of all time in her breakout role.
Executioners from Shaolin (1977)
Groins as strong as steel, kung fu stances that keep women's legs closed, androgynous martial arts masters -- this seminal action movie has a lot to say about the sexes, but not what you'd expect.
Random Princesses
Cornelia Sorabji
One of the first Indian women to practice law, she fought against -- and inside of -- a system that held no room for her.
Tomoe Gozen
Fearsome undefeated samurai warrior who was "a match for any god or demon," and is one of Japan's greatest heroines…
Ida B. Wells
One of the first anti-lynching advocates, she risked her life for decades to report on the truth when nobody would believe her.
Mercadera
When this Spanish merchant went out to pick cabbages, she stumbled upon an unusual kind of pest: a French knight.
Princess Pyeonggang
This princess held her father to his word in the most unexpected way: by demanding to marry the stupidest man in Korea.
Tamar of Georgia
Saint, sovereign, and fiercely independent woman, she quashed two rebellions from her ex-husband, expanded her nation's borders, and ushered in a golden age.
Nzinga Mbande
When the Portuguese took the throne from her, this Angolan queen made a new one: out of her own servant. She then fled to the jungle, conquered a tribe of cannibals, and waged war on the Portuguese for so long that they gave up and left.
Wilma Rudolph
Overcame polio, poverty, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, racism, whooping cough, and teenage pregnancy to make Olympic history by winning three…
Khawlah bint al-Azwar
When Byzantine forces captured her brother, this warrior poet donned the outfit of a black knight and went on a bloody rescue mission.
Malinche
Sold into sexual slavery to Hernan Cortes, this maligned woman became his interpreter, and it was with her words that…