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My uncle, who is my mother’s brother, worried that I might have no children. In that case, the estate I inherited from my grandmother the warrior would go to a remote cousin of my husband. [...]

My grandmother left her entire estate to her daughter and descendants on the condition that she bear the name of her family and stay on the land when married. She willed the male offspring to [...]

See how delicate you are, your small feet, fine wrists and ankles, your shoulders narrow as a princess’. My mother was built like of a castle: massive, solid, resistant. When she was but an [...]

I could hardly read that I pilfered my brothers’ books. I wanted to be Alexander, and conquer half the known world. Better, I would conquer the whole world. Until I realized I was a girl. We are [...]

Yet the priest behind his pulpit declares that our sex is never satisfied, he blames the first woman for all the vices in the world. At the beginning, the mother of us all was thirsty for [...]

Let me read it to you: ‘My respected mother, ‘I could not describe it to you, for it would take me all the hours of the day, and still you would not believe me. Our palace is so large that [...]

Your father refused to join when the first believers left. He said he was neither a knight, nor a monk, nor a beggar, which is true, but would he really have been turned away? Meanwhile, these [...]

There were three of us. The youngest had never had children. Her breasts and hips burst out of her clothes. We wrapped her in layers of kerchiefs to conceal her shapes, we crimped her hair like a [...]

It was the first time he took me along. We walked down their busy street, which was lined with every variety of shops and boutiques. Finely dressed men took their hats off to him, bowed their [...]

They are old, bent, and bitter. The first has a lip that hangs down to her navel: she uses it to moisten the wool. The second’s thumb is so thick it is wider than her palm: it flattens the [...]

While he was able to pledge a substantial dowry, Father said I would make an even better marriage if I were educated in fine manners, and in dance and music. He was right. He was always right. I [...]