People: "I don't read old stories to my daughters because they are outdated and sexist and women are all passive princesses waiting to be saved."
Me: I set out to read 26 traditional epics about woman heroes, and so far I have found 32.
Alright, so I am still working on the list and which ones I'll be able to read, but here is what I have right now
1/2
Follow #WomensEpics for updates
Agu-Nogon-Abakha (Buryat)
Bidasari (Malaysia)
Cilappatikaram (Tamil)
Matabagka seeks the deity of the wind (Philippines)
Epic of Siri (Tulu)
Tale of Princess Fatima (Arab)
The song of Grotti (Iceland)
Inyan Olugu (Igbo)
Hervor and Heidrek (Iceland)
Silence (France)
Gudrun (Germany)
Mṛcchakatika (India)
Manimekalai (Tamil)
Kundalakesi (Tamil)
#WomensEpics 2/2
The tale of the Nisan shamaness (Manchu)
Ocy-Bala (Altai)
Hi'iakaikapoliopele (Hawaii)
Queen Bertha (France)
Manasa (Bengal)
Chandravati's Ramayana (Bengal)
Umesiben Mama (Manchu)
Repunnot-un-Kur (Ainu)
Nne Mgbaafo (Igbo)
Ashima (Yi)
Juliana (Anglo-Saxon)
Sirin Mama (Sibe)
Note: this list doesn't include the stories I could not find a translation for (see earlier toots for that list)
@TarkabarkaHolgy
Which one was your favorite?
@Chip_Unicorn Hard to choose! It's highlight after highlight. I am only 8 epics in, but so far the favorites were the Tale of Princess Fatima, and The Triumph of the Snake Goddess :)
@TarkabarkaHolgy
List?!
I went to a Christian college. My friend & I went to the prof after a semester of reading classical literature and said "hey, we've just talked about men. What about women?"
To his credit, the next class he wrote the names of all the female characters in the stories we'd read (or descriptions of unnamed ones) & said "let's talk about this", but this made most of our classmates scared we were doing a feminism.
Anyway that story just to say "women's epics? Yes, please!"
@TarkabarkaHolgy I would also be interested to see a list. Three years ago, I started to deep dive into myths and legends and "passive princesses" or "evil/jealous witch" is pretty much the stereotype I encountered. But would be happy to learn more...
@ahoibrowser I think a lot of that is based on the canon that got created by collectors in the 19th century. Living folk tradition is much richer.
@TarkabarkaHolgy Ah interesting! Thanks :)
@TarkabarkaHolgy
share the list pls!
@TarkabarkaHolgy how do you fit this path where women drive the story in Torah?
https://blackskimmer.blogspot.com/2008/08/sketch-of-how-women-drive-story-in.html
I first encountered it on a magical night when we studied torah till dawn for Tikun Leil Shavuout. each hour a different teacher explored a different stage in the story. it was magical by 3 4am the whole story started unfolding.
I don't think it was planned.
somewhere there must be a poetical telling of it.
Just spent 20 minutes looking through the owner's manual of my Nissan juke. Couldn't find any references to this.
@TarkabarkaHolgy do you have a link/source for these ?
@ralex Most of them have been published in English in book format, or in larger collections
@ralex let me know if you can't find one I'll get the link
@TarkabarkaHolgy I was interested by Silence and the Queen Bertha, because I am french and never heard of it, and I can't find anything.
@TarkabarkaHolgy When you are ready to share the results of this, I would also love to know where you searched in order to find these.
@TarkabarkaHolgy
I did read those books (not a steady diet of course) to my children (female and male) so I could point to those issues and explain the problems. They can be a good resouce for teaching.
@TarkabarkaHolgy Thank you I was *about* to ask for the list. 
I love fairy tales, folklore and mythology (etc) but yeah. Dude saving princess kinda gets old after hundreds of stories and many years.
I will be following this post yes. 
Edit: I have a book of (American?) Indigenous folklore. Will browse through there.
I will also check my Egyptian folklore book for reccs!
@jtphillipsmnr I have a Feminist Folktales series on my blog (multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com). Active women are actually very common in folklore outside of the "Disney/Grimm" canon. I am focusing on epics now bc most people only ever encounter he Iliad and the Odyssey. It is a fascinating journey.
@TarkabarkaHolgy
Love, love love this.
I will pursue these stories.
My progeny is now off at college. I approached the problem with post-processing. We always talked about what characters we identified with and why.
Entirely skipping what creates a social framework...? I dunno. I didn't think, as I was raising my kiddo, that that was wise, either. Let's face it, I'm an angry feminist, a character in our unfolding narrative, my kiddo, IMO, would be better off if she knew why.
@TarkabarkaHolgy does the book of Ruth count?
@Shanmonster I guess it would
@TarkabarkaHolgy I don't know about an epic per se, but there is a long oral tradition about Sedna/Nuliajuk.
Do you also have links to those? At least some of them have to be online somewhere?
@TarkabarkaHolgy
There's a scene in one of Bujold's book where a female character rants to her parents about the basic sexism of stories...but not for what you listed here, and it's always stuck out in my mind.
Specifically, she talks about how all the stories end when the woman gets married and/or has kids. They are simply done with that, and she finds that repellant.
I know this is -not- a universal truth, but it did give me a lens to think about another implicit sexist assumption.
@Oggie @TarkabarkaHolgy
I think that was said in "A Civil Campaign" by Kareen when Cordelia had the "talk" with her, her parents and Mark.
@kirtai @TarkabarkaHolgy
Correct! I was at the text limit, so I trimmed out the specifics of the title (it's also not a story I would recommend as an intro point, and it's very much a sideline to the primary plot).
It just resonated with me, because I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective. The wife's life 'ends' when she gets married/pregnant in most of those stories.
@Oggie @TarkabarkaHolgy
Yeah, even though the books are supposed to stand alone I also wouldn't recommend starting with that one.
Oh, at least one of the Harvest Moon games did that. If you play a girl, it ends right after you get married.
@TarkabarkaHolgy
There's a book I've got about the European sailor ballad tradition where women cross-dressed to save the day. Extremely popular vernacular plotline in the, what, 1700s
@AimeeMaroux
@TarkabarkaHolgy My favorite story has always been Tatterhood.
An infertile queen turns to a witch who advises her that two flowers will grow under her bed, "one fair and one foul," and under no circumstances is she to eat the foul one. You see where this is going.
Anyway Tatterhood's gorgeous sister gets her head replaced by a donkey's and Tatterhood saves her and they go off for seven years of adventure before a king decides to marry Princess Pretty, who insists his son marry Tatterhood...
@TarkabarkaHolgy So Prince Sulks-A-Lot is riding to the double wedding under duress and starts demanding, "Why do you ride that ugly donkey?"
"Is it? Why, it's the finest stallion." Lo and behold...
"Why do you wave around that wooden spoon?"
"It's a jeweled scepter!" And so on...
Finally Tatterhood asks, "Aren't you going to ask about my hideous dirty face?"
By which point he smiles and says no, because clearly if she decides she wants to be beautiful, she will be.
HAS MOVED 
@TarkabarkaHolgy thank you for providing a list :) It was my first thought after reading your original toot.