Pirate Queen
Author: Helaine Becker
Illustrator: by Liz Wong
Ages: 6-12
Groundwood Books
If you told people that the most powerful pirate of all time was a peasant Chinese woman, who, in the 1700s, at the age of 32, presided over a fleet of 1,800 ships and 70,000 men, most people wouldn’t believe you.
If you told people that the most powerful pirate of all time was a peasant Chinese woman, who, in the 1700s, at the age of 32, presided over a fleet of 1,800 ships and 70,000 men, most people wouldn’t believe you.
His-Story tends to obscure the feats of women, and in an occupation that is so categorically male, it is no wonder the Pirate Queen’s story has been buried, to the point where even her given name is lost to the annals of history, and she is simply known as Zheng Yi Sao (Wife of Zheng Yi). While Becker acknowledges in the Authors Note that primary sources about Zheng Yi Sao don’t exist, she has filled in the details to tell a compelling story of Zheng Yi Sao from a first-person perspective.
Born into poverty, Zheng Yi Sao is kidnapped, along with several other girls, at the behest of the pirate Zheng Yi, who is looking for a wife. They are treated unkindly, no-one heeding their cries. But Zheng Yi Sao knew that she would be treated no better at home, and seized this opportunity to take charge of her life. She demands that Zheng Yi give her an equal share of his enterprise in order to marry her.
In Canton, girls like us were like ink: used and used until we were all used up.
…I was ink, but I could also be the brush.
If Fortune allowed, I would write my own scroll.
Zheng Yi relents and within six years he is dead and Zheng Yi Sao takes command of the entire fleet, giving orders, distributing favors and forming alliances. She goes on to conquer land and sea, defeating even the emperor and his foreign hired help with her Red Flag Fleet.
Even her retirement and surrender, is on her own terms, and she leaves Canton both rich and free.
This is not your typical strong woman in history type book for this age group as it does not sugar coat the sexism, abuse, coercion, kidnapping, and machiavellian maneuvers that Zheng Yi Sao has to endure to seal her fate. However strong she is portrayed, and no matter how in charge she seems of her destiny, a very clear, very Asian (ask me about Hinduism’s take on this) fatalism runs through the book. the book both starts and ends with these lyrical words:
I never dreamed of the sea./
…But Fortune cares nothing for your dreams. She / takes up your life in her cup and shakes it so hard / your teeth rattle in your head and your heart roars / like a dragon in your chest. Then she throws the / bones onto her table of lacquer and jade. /
Your fate is sealed.
In the end, I had written my own scroll, / using brine and blood as my ink. /
I had never dreamed of the sea, but the sea, /it seemed, had dreamed of me.
I think this will be a great addition to the shelf of any young kid who needs stories of strong women in their life, in other words, every kid out there.
Pirate Queen (Support an Independent Bookstore)
Pirate Queen (Amazon)*
More books for this Age Group can be found here.
My thanks to Groundwood Books for providing a Review Copy of this book. All opinions provided herein are my own.
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