ReviewChinese female pirate Cheng I Sao brought to life in Pirate Women, along with other woman buccaneers
When it comes to the almost forgotten lives of female buccaneers such as Cheng, who led a pirate fleet in South China Sea and was lover of Hong Kong’s Cheung Po Tsai, separating fact from fiction can be hard
Pirate Women
by Laura Sook Duncombe
Chicago Review Press
The cartoonish cover may not grab the attention of history buffs tired of flimsy books on female pirates, but they’d be wrong to bypass this volume, which fills in some of the gaping holes in scholarship on these women.
For example, despite Chinese pirate Cheng I Sao (1775-1844), co-leader with her husband, Cheng I, of the Red Flag Fleet in the South China Sea, being one of the most successful pirates of all time, relatively little about her is known (which is why this reviewer abandoned a documentary project on her years ago).
According to Laura Sook Duncombe, the same is true of other female pirates. They are absent from historical discussion, the author says, because “their very existence is threatening to traditional male and female gender roles”. And because these women were considered unworthy subjects of documentation in the past, subsequent study has been difficult, although a few historians (Anne Chambers and Joan Druett among them) have added to our knowledge of them.