BRONZE DRUM

When Beyoncé asked, “Who run the world?” was she thinking about the legendary Trưng sisters?

During the early years of the Common Era, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhi, two daughters of a Việt lord, grew up within palace walls. Their northern homeland was under the increasingly tyrannical rule of the Hán from neighboring China. Trưng Trắc, the older sister, was studious and steadfast; Trưng Nhi was rebellious and resistant to the constraints of royal life. When the uneasy peace their father had maintained with the Hán was disrupted and terrible injury was inflicted upon their family and loved ones, the young women (eventually referred to as the She-Kings of the Việts) call upon their inner strengths, upon their classical education in the art and philosophy of war, and, most importantly, upon other Việt women to defend their homeland. Marshalling an army of 80,000 women, the sisters waged a spectacular war—complete with drums, arrows, and elephants—on the Hán, and, for a short time, the postwar kingdom was ruled by Trưng Trắc. When her rule was disrupted in a Hán rout, an effort was made by the conquerors to confiscate all the bronze drums that had become the means of battle communication for the women warriors in an effort to build a towering symbol of Hán superiority. Some drums, hidden and buried by the vanquished women, are still unearthed today, providing continued support for the legacy of the fierce duo. The sisters have long been revered as national icons in Vietnam, and this fictionalized account of their rise to military greatness includes extensive, cinematic descriptions of battlefield tactics and imagined scenes of heartache and horror while not avoiding references to mistakes in judgment (diplomatic and otherwise) they may have made.

Nguyen reminds us that the power of women is nothing new.