folks in washington dc. i'm swati sharma. i'm the head in chief and publisher of■2■x[g bnd also a longtime friend of elizabeth flock. is a journalist and the author of two books and the fourth, fourth book is already out. please buy it if you hav. purit. so we're here to talk today about this excellent book she wrote. first of all, is this focus so good? cathartic but dark but uplifting and also funny. and if y'all haven't read it, i'm really excited for you to go on this jouey on this huge, huge accomplishment. so i'm going to start by from the beginning of my version of thening, which may not be your beginning. we were at a restaurant in washington, d.c. of like five or

six years ago, and we talked about bandit queen. and as y'all will see in the books, bandit queen was was a female vigilante in the eightie and nineties in india. and she and liz and i were talk about her power, her journey. and you want to write a book on her and from ther whappened o this book today? yeah.so i asked swat, this has a really long journey as books tend to be. the last book took ten years, so this one took five. so we're, you know, getting faster. but i asked swati to do this in part because she's was with me at the beginning, which is, as she said, the bandit queen i had written the last book about love marriage in india, where i started my career as a journalist. and mumbai, learned a lot aboute bandit queen, who is a low caste woman and a child abusive child marriage, who escaped that and

went on to lead cr bandits and avenge crimes against men who are abusers and high caste men in particular. she even once killed an entire town of men. she was really quite hardcore and i was just+ fascinated with this person and my editor said, i think you should look deeper about why you are fascinated with this person. and then i realized it wasn't just the bandit queen, it was female vigilantes in our pop culture, in our films and our songs and our mythology that i was really intes in and that i realized a lot of us are really interested in, whhe drag, you know, or the latest marvel movie dixie chicks. good bye, earl. whatever the case is, i think a lot of us are interested in these anti-heroes. and so my next question is why? why are we so interested in these people who fight back? and i realized for me, as someone, a woman who's experienced sexual violence and a woman out in the world that i think we wish we and so after ti

thought as a journalist, i need to go find them. who are the real■f life female vigilantes? who are the real life women who are fighting back? i'm so obsessed with women like the bandit queen. well, are they're modern day versions livinout in the world and if so, as a journalist, i want to go report on them, interview them, get to know them, tell their stories. really started. and then i spent once i figured that out, then i spentoing aroue world and meeting them. why on these three specific women? yeah, so i actually i found so many stories and they stories of women who fight back against violence with violence really exist everywhere in the world. and i could have do s about a woman in the ukraine. i could have done a story abo mg on drug cartels and also fighting agastviolence. but i focused on these stories

in part because of a mixture of women who wanted to talk access that i had to them. but also because time. so i got to go and meet them and spend time with them as they were happening. i wanted to do a story in the u1 because i think we have this idea that women who are experiencing horrific violence happens like out there. but of course it's happening in the us as well. so the first story i found was an alabama. i didn't choose it because like, oh, it's the south or something like that. it just happened to be where i found a woman who had been arrested for killing her rapist and claimed self-defense and was charged with murder and i think i saw a tweet about her story and it just said, like, woman kills rapists and is now in mental institution. and that immediately set off alarm bells in my head like, what is this story? what's re this story? what's really going on there? britney smith's mom. i got on the phone

and we went and met britney in the mental institution where they had put her while she was awaiting trial. and then that began like a five ye interviewing her and getting to know her story. and then, you know, later found the indian serious story as well. yeah, i mean, one thing i found that was fast in eating is although these women were often alienated and did have to take actionve a community. i mean, ramona's one of my this is britney's mom. she's one of my favorite characters and tell me about the community that you've found that these women have even in such troubling times. yeah, i think the relationships in this book are a huge part of why women were able to fight back and why more horrible things didn't happen they did. even though all of the women were punished for fighting back in different brittany's mom, ramona, is probably her biggest advocate. so when britney was arrested for murder, her mom was told to shut

up and not talk about it. it would be better for her and ramona did the opposite of that. and ramona is not a person that you told to shut up. , i mean, the first time i met her, she talked to me about when her husband was abusive to her andbroom and waited for him to e home so she could beat himuse her again. so that's the woman that i was deinso ramona said, you know, 'm not going to be quiet. and she contacted everyone she could, which is ultimately how i as a national news reporter, heard ou her. and she really rallied people locally. and when i came down to alabama, i realized britney had a whole community of women around her of advocates, and just women in the community who said, like, i've experienced something similar and i could see myself being in a situation like fight for you. and so they had held protests outside of the courthouse like woman wrongly accused of murder, killing her rapist and and in all of theaslot of women surrous

one woman. andory is really the story of one woman on trial. but the other two stories, the india story is an entire gang taking on abusive men. and in syria, it's a it's it's the story of an entire militia. so the book progressively gets to bigger and bigger groups of women fighting in different ways. yeah, love that. and i think that was one thing is that, you know, this book ma sod heavy, but i didn't find it that heavy. maybe the britney story was a h. but then as you keep reading, you, you know, you' finding chuck the this is a this is a person who was part of ypg militia. i mean, she said she used the word joy in kind of taking action against against isis and killing isis fighters. there's another character, angourie person in india who really does. people aretaking her

land away and she fights back and i found it uplifting and at times cathartic. did you how did you how did did you find it cathartic? i know you talked about your own trauma. how did you kind of deal with your own trauma in writing this book? yeah. so i had a lot of mental breakdown whilwr book. my body kind of revolted against me at some points, but i think it was also really helpful and i is a book about women with agency. it's a book that is about domestic violence, but it's not a book of looking at it from the perspective of victimhood. and a lot of times people today, they don't use the word victim, they use the word survivor. and i think it was really important to me to write a book about women with agency and looking what happened at what happens when women dgh back for me? i open the author's note. i really didn't want to write ab about being raped when i was in rome in my twenties and how i look

back on that. and i, i wish that i was active and i spenife wondering why i froze. and actually freezing is something that people do in lots of scenarios when they're afraid. and that was something i only undersod later, but i think that gave me sort of like an interest and obsession with agency and action. and so i really wanted to follow thoseiolence from the other perspective, all of those perspectives are important. but for me, i think in order to feel like i could tell these stories, i wanted to take that lens. is that why the bandit queen story got to you personally? i remember us talking about it and that it really i was interested in bandit queen because when she became a politician, she was on a cover of a magazine about bollywood. so that's why i knew her. and you were into her very reasons. is that why you felt a connection to her story because of your own experience? yes. yeah. and i think it also raises questions for me about

draw the line. and i think that's the question we always have with vigilantes is like, wow, this is so cool. this is so cool and then all of a sudden you're like, ooh, i don't know if that's okay. i'm not sure. i'm totally still on their side. and that's kindf the question that i wanted readers to wrestle with as they were reading. so, you know, angourie in this book, the indian female vigilante leader who i profile, she actually is emulating the bandit queen. and she's similarly she becomes really invested in her own mythologizing. she's wanting to appear larger she is doing things that you're like, i'm not sure. like at some point she kidnaps a mother who has witnessed a gang rape in order to get that mother to give up the names of the rapists and i was she was bragging about that to me and i moment where i start to take a step back. and she also, as you read in the book, has entered politics. and she didn't want to tell me that she was■é■u entering polits because as we know, politics in

many places around the world is ith corruption. and so i was actually there in northern india reporting■ on her and she disappeared it and said, i'm going to be gone for a day. ands a giant billboard with her face appearing at a political event. so i said, i think you're here and i would like to come to the event, but i think that that question of where we draw the line of what is acceptable in terms of fighting back is is another reason that i was5 it queen because she too crosses the line. she killed an entire town of men she ul rapists on all fours naked with the -- of a rifle so is acceptable. and what isn't. people are complicated exactly these women didn't? do you feel like in the end they did feel empowered? and i mean, their story isn't over yet, but in this moment, how do you feel? yeah, i think as you the book

you'll see like they're as they're being punished for it. obviously they're not feeling great about that. is currently still in prison. i haven't been able to get her a copy of the book because she's in prison and can't get books at the moment. but she has absolutely no regrets in terms the fact that she feels like women have been empowered by her story as ramona mother put it. like when you get a bunch of little nobodies together, we become somebody. and so that is really britney's perspective on it. i think the latest message that deeper, deeper into politics and she's finding her own way into power. and she check who fought in this all female militia is certainly battle srr weary, but i think she would never say that regretted going to war either. for what she thought were really important reasons. so they ■ñdon't regret it, but they're certainly bearing the

personal costs. yeah. going back to britney, one thing that i found really interesting, what you said about how times are changing and that there are one reason these women did have to take action themselveis because system society wasn't but you did say that. that is maybe at least in the united states, there is some change you're seeing. can you talk a little bit about at change? yeah. so the britney story is about women back against their abusers ane women have been incarcerate cited for defending themselves against their abusers. and it hasn't been called self-defense. it's called murder or manslaughter. you know, and there's a lot of situations that are somewhere in the gray area. like it's clear self-defense every time. certainly it often falls outside of the realms of what we would say is self-defense in legal system. but i!gourts are finally starting to pay attention to the fact that there is a context of domestic or sexual abuse that's

often present. so there are states now were passing laws that are looking back at women in prison and looking at the history and context of why they're in prison and certainly when i went through a lot of these cases, it was like they were portrayed in the ■dia as like heartless murderers. and then you look their case files and there's like ard of tr decades. and none of that made ito the press back in the day. now you're seeing a lot more of that. there's amazingos organization called survived and punished. that focus on this issue is doing a lot of advocacy around it. and also you're seeing like lawyers and, even some police who are becoming more trauma informed, which i think is so, so important, because otherwise you'llion totally from head to toe and you'll have a cop just be like, oh yeah, she murdered him. and just having them actuly be aware of the larger. , i. i was thinking that why this

change happen? why, why have are the systems very slowly and maybe subtly ? and i thought it was because of me too. but also it's possible because of the change in perceptions around trauma. tell me about what you've seen in the changes you've seen there and the difference between syria and what's happening in america. i think in all three cases it's actually happening from the ground up. times as a journalist, i know i've made the mistake of going top down and saying like, oh, we need to change our laws. we need to talk to senators and important. i think honestly, the most social change that's happened if on the ground. it's because of organizers it's because of incarcerated women. it's because of women, you know, kurds who are fighting back on the ground. it's because women who took to thsts five years before metoo in india to speak out against sexual violence. they took tohe thousands. i think it's i think it's almost

always bottom up that actually creates social change and it's a lot of a lot of people speaking up and a lot more awareness than our mothers generations and our mospeaking out more openly about all of these things and not ashamed and feeling like they're able to do so. you know, from our conversations tonight and over time, thing is clear, as you did write this book yourself, but there was an in mind who is that audience? who were you writing this■l book for? so i got one review that i got really upset and the first thing i did is look at my baby who then ate a book. and i think i tweeted about this because i was just like, oh, okay, my baby like a zen master. he's like, if i like a book, i eat it. if i don't like a book, eat it. but then i talk to a friend of mine who i talked to throughout this process when. she was like, you know, you e this for the critics. you wrote it for the women who

!j or not been able to defend themselves. and i, i think i did write it for those people, but i also wrote it for men to like, i think, a big of this book is about how when we're under these systems, all of us are struggling, all of us are left be and the questions of like what makes self-defensend how do we fix these broken system are questions for all of us. and i think all of us can appreciate a good hero or anti-hero. so i hope that men read it, too. i know that a couple of the men who have read it have told me were really surprised by a lot of what they read there. and especially especially the exploration of cultures of honor, where men feel like ve and that's something that i found in all three places in di and and alabama. and so now hopefully a little bit of something in this book for everyone.

yeah, i absolutely think there is and it's also there's something personal that i think everyone can take away but it's also the larger stakes what we want to change about society. and as think about you've done podcasts, documentaries and topic. whato think what is kind of the next frontier you'd want to explore in this space. my next frontier is taking■f cae my baby a little bit. i do want to write about the intersection of motherhood and the environment because that's a lot of what i'm thinking about now and protecting the world for future generations. but yeah, i want i hope to continue to do this kind of reporting, which is spending years with people because i began my career doing like quit hit journalism and i think i've veered very far the other direction, which is like i'm going to interview people 5 to 10 years and we're going see ho. and i think that there's a lot

of value in that because people become increasingly more complicated the longer you know them. and i just think it gives such a deeper a deeper picture. your job becomes harder because then you have 10,000 pages of notes that you're you hopefully finish the project. how? get personal for a second. how was it giving birth to the kids? baby in the world five months ago and now doing that at the time that's quite something my partner is here somewhere with my baby and il probably say that it was really bad for him, but remember there was one day where i was recording the podcast and i couldn't breathe because of the baby pressing up against my lungs and to speak. and then i was also doing edits and i felt like i couldn't understand what any of the edits actually saidbut, but we did i's really cool to have my son along with me and i think when i had a

baby, i wanted have a girl and i thought i was to cry. when i found out that i had a boy. but i think it's really important to good men and couldn't imagine having anything else. so yeah, absolutely i'm now going back to these three women. i don't know if you can answer this, but did you have a favorite i'll type mine is probably the one i related to is i don't know if you' guess, but it was really. why? because. because she rejected the way she was brought. she rejected some of the demands, put on her. and even if it wasn't, i mean, that's thing about the stories about these women. it all like brutal sexual assaults. one woman was because she bought a house and people wouldn't let her live in it. another was, you know, she was really fighting for her country for her people. and she she really wanted to she she was stubborn.

she wantedo do what she wanted. and so i related, too, to that. who was did■ you do you have a favorite or someone you related to the most? i think the most interesting to report was choetech and. i think the joy that i found there was something that was really surprising to me. and i have like all these pictures of ypg fighters and they're like holding rocket propelled grenades and grinning and i think that was a really surprising thing to me, just to be there andin these circumstand war funny and has just this to her that is like unbelievable, just this incredible bravado. and she was always making fun of me and she just iou want to hang out with. so and you know, at the end of the day, she had so many her stomach was split open in the shape of a tee. she'd been hit by drone strike. she'd been shot at multiple times. sh killing like 50 aces fighters and she was still just, like, raring to go.

so but she also, like, experienced ptsd and lost her comrades and lost a woman she loved and maybe was even in love with. and so i think i just admired her more than anything. yeah. and you know, one thing i would have a really hard time with this if i was reporting this, but, you know, the conversations around objectivity in journalism, how do you not kc■r■ábecome totally like best s with these women or do you become best friends and you can still tell their story? how did you handle and juggle that? nonfiction is one of the most ethically dubious genres is, i think, and i wish we talked about it me, but i don't think we're friends per se, but i think there'of and cap and. i care so much about these women. i care about them being okay, but i care that way about everyone i report on. but so many years spent with them, i care very much that britney is in

prison and hope that she gets out and hope that they stop punishing her for is more addiction issues than anything i care. she doesn't have ptsd forever. and i mean, i'm sure she will struggle with forever, but i hope that she finds some healing and. yeah, i think we talk about objectivity in a way that suggests we have no feelings or and that's the reason i started with my personal story, because i actually think it's better to be upfront about where your biases lie and■] your where yo'e coming from and then i actually think the reader wl you more than if you pretend you have absolutely stake in it. yeah, and it's not like it wasn't even bias. it's your story think it was terrible, more powerful because grappling withe central question what happened if women fight back? did you really did you find the answer to that? did you do you have a conclusion of what women should be doing in

these situations? i mean, i not going out and suggesting that everyone go buy a kalashnikov and you know, take action. but imfor a world in which our institutions respond and protect us and are more trauma informed and pay attention and hoping for a world in which women do not have to be violent to fight back. but if they do fight back, i hope that we don't continue to punish them for it. , i think one of your other central questions washe with female vigilantes. i mean, after i googling maybe e right over here. like how, where i haven't seen the dragon tattoo movies and i'm like, now i want to after readg this book, what is the fascination people have with femaletes and what is that about? i mean, i don't

maybe some of you guys do, but for some reason, we're obsessed. you do. for some reason we're obsessed with superheroes. i just really think our lives are like a little bit boring and. we want something more. but i also just. there's something deeply psychological about, like said at the top, like wishing that we could be them. there's a lot that a orough in , wishing that we could have done more, we could have fought back or that we had more power or agency than we do have. yeah, totally. i think those moments are there. was there was there. do you want to share like a particular moment in the book? that was onethat really resonat. i think it's battle of kobani that she check was in. i don't know if you guys remember, but it was the height of isis and there was a battle that took place and the whole worl started paying attention. and that's when isis was basically takingy over huge swaths of syria.

and we really felt like, oh my god, what if they take like a huge part of the middle east, like, we're we're really in trouble here and there was coverage of the ypg and these all female fighting back. but i don't think people realized the extent to which these women the reason that isis no longer much power at all and they reallyt fought alongside, but these women won some of the that and t check was t was thet battle she was that she it was her first kill she had her period there and couldn'en wash herself was like fighting for days in the pouring rain you know where your your clothes are so wet and leaden that you can't even move. imagine that. ng her, i knew the battle of kobani and i knew how important itll that story is lie most incredible things i'vet mat how many stories out there that we just only know this little sliver of and how much more

really is going on. so yeah,under because i was at e at this time and that everyone is covering almost ut not around isis but not ypg. it overlooked? there was a lot of coverage on the■ ypg, but in a very specific way, like look at these hot women holding kalashnikovs, fighting really cool. like one of the women was known as the angela angelina jolie of kurdistan. there was another woman known as angel kobani. like everyone was posting of, like, look how beautifwas total. and there was some coverage of the ypg. but i thk like it's a really dangerous so we don't have as many foreign correspondents as we and i just think it was really complicated the conflict hard to get access to where the fighting was going on and we had like this weird exoticized asian their, you kno,

them.usly is so much more so i think it's it's one of those stories that's really important. and there's fighting today, but they're fighting the turkish state. and so it's a less story they're not fighting isis. so when they were fighting isis, people were talking about e it d versus evil type. but now they're fighting the turkish state who's an ally. and so we're barely covering at all in the press. and so you it's a story that's worth continuing to follow. yeah, absolutely. little bit about hungary, who we haven't touched on as what changes. tell us a little about hungary■k and the changes that she to her her city of she did r village satisfied hungary is the indian female vigilantend was killing t killing i'm sorry fighting she wanted to kill them. she did set a police station on fire. right? no, she didn't kill anyone.

she wanted to kill the ldl out. but you know, i think i was trying to with all tseomen ascertain, like, what is the level of actual influence and change that they have been able to effect and with anger? i think it really did cause men to think twice before abusing women. i talked to so i'm really afraif that green gang. like i do wanto e them showing up at my house at all. i talked to a few men whoee one of them said he still had nightmares about them. so theythe men in the region were really not used to. women, women coming out■ and taking action and showing up and angry has this swagger to her as well. she's a large woman with you know, deep set eyes and a really strong voice. and she, like her mother, told on the&n■y on the phone all the time, which is like, halt, --. i don't know if i can. so she's really intimidating and

police would actually take action like she would show up and be like, w this domestic ab? and they would be like, okay, let's arrest them and just get r e. they were it's not like they were terrified of her. the police there were more jus like, i don't want to deal with this. so like, let's just arrest them so she can stop up. so she was actually very effective. and, you know, to this day now she's becoming a politician. but i think she's doing that strategically because she feels eed to get in the center of power in order to keep effecting change for my women. and it's like as a politician, she can't keep swinging her bamboo cane. she absolutely can'ans of course broken the law and all kinds of ways. and although angry, has had three or four court cases against her and been arrested multiple times with women laying outside of the police station demanding to be released, all nine of her t anywhere. her son has served as her lawyer and all of them have eithe drops still ongoing and it's been or'g

to happen there either. yeah, i angry what you just said, she did want to become a hero or anti-hero. just a hero. i think she wanted to become a hero. maybe an anti-hero, she told me after the her that she seemed bad, but i didn't make her look bad enough. but it doesn't like britney to a hero, though she ended being a source of inspiration for so many women. is that right. yeah. i mean, britney didn't even want to people that she'd been raped and she didn't want her story to get out there. it was actually her mom who put her story out there. andut her story many times. but i think britney feels now like if i have had to go through so much i want it to be meaningful and useful. and i hope that i can inspire othe women. she's now in prison, rooming with another woman who killed her abuser, whose case i also covered. and then i just found out that

they're living in the same bunk at tutwiler prison. women, which just gives you a sense of how many stories there are like about this. like there there are out there. sorry. oh, so, so yeah. but i don't think britney ever wanted to be in the limelight. okay, we're going to go to for you before we go there. and if you don't know an answer i have one for you because you told me this earlier. but is there a that you did that didn't make it into book that that you%tw- love and that is dr to you. i tried to interweave a lot of the stories into the book, like through little epigraphs, the (q■ñ■beginning. so there's a lot of mythology in there of like collie and medusa and durga and i think i mentioned the mexican vigilante leader whoook on drug cartels. so i have a little bit about her story in there. which one are you thinking of? i'm just thinking about the woman who would w carry around a rifle and the village in india ang, she would threateo

shoot them. yeah. and she was like 85 yea o doing so. i actually w mean, they don't w, so i think career for me was a little. yeah, i think you should go find her or be do want to say is, one of my favorite parts of this book is that it was three women, but it was about thousands of women. and how you were able to bring in so many different stories of bandit queen, but also check anr women who are affected by violence like britney. i just want to say that was so powerful and if there is the ersal universal to the universal message, if that aspie ashley you know i think we've a lot of bollywood as i said in, there's often women who and not anymore.

that's changing. weakness here and i just thought that was just incredibly powerful. so thank you for this. amazing, amazing book. and now we wilgo to questions. and we bring you in. someone's can bee. so you mentioned when you were g about kind of how this like the need for protecting high so earlier you were talking about women and the protecting themselves and the hope that alsoel do from looking at because differet institutions and legal as white balance do

you think would be like from your, you know experience looking at. of these institutions in depth. there could be both like giving women more freedom, letting accepting the defensed your ground for britney spears or know, standing up to prevent this fromap realistically, you , it's almost impossible to prevent violence from ever happening. sott what's what do you see as e balance that needs to be struck beee being more lenient in terms of how women defend, looking at women defending themselves andent in terms of preventing violence or punishing men or just abusers against these women in the first

place. yeah. i mean, i think, for example, like a lot of people■4 against incarcerating people unnecessarily, but then when it comes to like sexual assault, we'll be like, oh you should jail him. and so i thi important to look at like, what are the actual solutions that we're talking about? ut improving these institutions? so when it comes to something like domestic abuse? a lot of the research that i've found is that like cops are not that well-suited to respond to domestic abuse, like social workers actually often do a much better job at respond to it. so we need to look methods and d people who canespond to this. and when it comes to the criminal legal system, the stans could agree, is not a great law. it actually really works for white men almost exclusively. it's does a very poor job in protecting women as particularly women of color. but is reforming t ground law or getting rid of it and just using another self-dset if the lawyers and jus

that enacting, you know, prosecuting, etc., that law actually informed as well. so i think we need to look at it like every level and it's really complicated. right. but there's like the thing that i always find when i'm these stories, it's like there's people working on all of this. if you think that you're the first to report or research something you're not, there's someone who's been toiling away on this for like 30 years. so it's often a matter of actually like implementing the good work that people have already done to reform our institutions, whether it's the cops or the courts or the government. 0qhi, my name is jared. that my quest to do? you spoke about narrative of nonfiction being murky and sort of a gray■t area. what is the conflict that you felt while covering these stories over the years? and as an author and a writer

and a public person? how do you deal with that and how do you kind of squ a own? yeah, i mean, one thing i've always struggled with, part of narrative nonfiction is reenact myths. so it's not just talking about things that you see. so a lot of this book, i there for but a lot of it i also was not like a big part of the green gang happened i was even there so it's dubious to write something a fact when you weren't there. ll you can do of course is interview as many people as possible and get as as much document as possible because documents don't lie quite as much as people do. but i think another thing is just the relationship have with those people, which i talked a little bit about and also like, for example, with britney, i believe britney and because of all the reporting i did that she was defending herself. but after did a new yorker story about her killing her rapist, she went on to set another boyfriend's who was abusive his mattress on

so that was a really hard moment for me as a journalist because i felt i just wrote this whole story about how this woman was defending herself, which i believe based on not because i believe her story necessarily. like i interviewed dozens of people, i looked at all the crime scene photos, went. i spent hundreds if not thousands of hours reporting that story before writing it. butthis thing that i would say was more retaliatory. it certainly wouldn'tefense. so then i had to really sit with that story and ask myself, like, did i mis report this? or what is going on here? and i, i actually found like, i don't think i misreport it, but it's possible for someone to defend themselves in one scenario and not in another, because this is a person who's dealt with domesticnning of thel and again and again and again c. but to just think then for britney like this t person that i really care about, but then i'm writing about her taking retaliatory action. i'm writing about her having addiction issues in more detail in this book.np) but thankfully, i built a lot of

trust with her. and i think, you know, she hasn't read the book, but she knows pretty much everything that's in it. and i think she felt like it's %óokay you to tell the full stoy of me because i'm i'm not ashamed of it. d you. so i think building trust with your subjects is really thethan. and liz. hi. um, i'm really interested in how you made contact with, in particular, these three women that you profiled. what's the first conversation like? you know, when sitting down with somebody and you want to them and you know, you're in india or syria or wherever more those ■,ally curious about that because the one in alabama, i could see like the access being a little easier, but like how did you approach and what did they say? and did people say no before they said yes and you know,hat were the conversations like?

i guess what i'm asking. through the stories in india, in i worked with local journalists there quite a lot and you know, they're all cited in these sri partnerships that n goree. her written by a local journalist named saurabh sharma. i contacted saurabh. i said, i read your amazing story about on goree. it was onllihs and i have about 8 million questions. and so he said the phone with me for several hours and then i said can i come and interview on goree do you want to come with me. and so he went on to report this project with me i first talked to agree on the phone. she said, just come. 9,i don't really want to talk to you over the phone. so just. com which course it's like, okay, i'm going to like $10,000 to just come by on money, but okay. yeah. and then i met her and she was sitting in this chair in her house, which of course was because it's the green gang and hot pink■■ and she had all the

women behind her and she started just telling me her life story. and as s women behind her started, like laughing when she laughed and crying when she okay i'm glad i spent the time and money to over here. and you. and then it went from there. and in terms of the serious story, it was ao througlocal joa really long to find check. and i journalist that i connected, whose name is solon muhammad amin. i said, can you just find a ypg fighter for me? anyone like i don't care because all i care about is that they're in at, least minimum. and so that's kind of like hard to begin with. and we talked to two different women and actually the other man the book because she had amazing love stories. and i'm a sucker for love stories. i couldn't help but i her, but she check was the one i ultimately chose. credibly badass and and she was willing to talk to me.

and she wasn't like desperate to telike, you know, i've been a witness to so much and i feel like i'm going to die soon. and if i don't, you my story, these stories are going to die with me. so i was really i felt like that was really important to stay with her. was really i had a question about how these different women related to the use oft that, i's a lot of feminist activism that violence and militarized masculinity and right the consequences of war on what for women. but then thesefw women's are usg violence in part in self-defense, but also to pursue political goals, it sounds like. so i'm curious how they thought about that and how they thought about the violence and feminism, or even if they even describe feminists. yeah. so like both gloria, our mothers and have

like of coursewg sides them too. and, you know, we of course, we have this cliché of men as the nurturers and the carers and the mothers and the ones who are ■n future generations and all of that. and all of that. true. and i think it's important to also look at the other parts5q women. and i think that's why i started the book with saying that's basically like that women can that these women talked aboutetg to. and i think when it came to britney, she said, i don't want to have been violent. that's not something i aspire to do. but w think the most succinct answer to your question is actually a saying exists in and among the thorns not to attack but to defend itself. the only reason that it has thorns is because of something is coming at it. it's to defend itself. and so basically the violence is

only out of necessity. anso whether it was in mythology or in these women, violenceasact, as we often see n masculine storivi act. and that was something that all of the w emphasized last. there are two things that you touched on that i wanted to ask about how they relate. one is a lot of survivor is of this kind of violence tend to oh sorry a lot of survivors of this kind of violence prefer to be than victims because of the associatio having that comes with the label victim. but you also touched on something interesting that i find is kind of hard to ■knot■) contradictory, but hard to reconcile that, which is what who protect themselves by fighting

back are somes monsters. and then the sort of aspect thas glossed over, if that makes sense. so was wondering how in the various women you talk to if anyone like had an interesting way of reconciling those both wanting to seem active but then when they take action, you know, just further dehumanized for it just in a different way that makes sense. yeah i mean it's really complicated and i think like for them certainly the pain that they experience that led up to them fighting back was not something that was removed from their story and you know there is a lot of that in these stories. i think it's it's hard to reconcile that. but i think that complication is really like at the heart of the book, like moves back forth between the violent acts that they are subjected to and also

the acted. i think something that i it comes to mind when you're talking is that like i was really upset with passive. and then i realized like the goal this book is not to say like, i wishad en i wish i had killed that man in that moment. the goal is to be more not havd while also understandi wha can f for two more. lives. you referenced that all these societieha strong sense of honor. the men in the societies do. why do you think that these women had to take when somebodyy couldn't go to men in their live t brothers their cousins, their fathers, even

though there is a strong sense of honor among the m i the communities in which they live so actually in some cases they did. so that's actually a really coo. and really interesting is that there were men that stood up for these women and in a lot of cases weren't necessarily affected of like actually in the britney story. she calls her brother over after she was raped and he comes over to defend her. and that actually makes the situation even more money than it was at the beginning. but he did come over to defend hee took credit for having killed todd, the man who raped her, which was because he said, like, hey, if i take credit, the cops arend say, lik, it's fine that you defended your sister like, i get it. he sister, too, if she was raped. but if britney said she killed em, she would go to prison. so in that case, that was her brother standing up to help and, you know, in anger his case, her

husband was actually like a really quiet supporter of her. and i don't think angry could have ever the leader of a gang if she had a different kind of husband, like her husband was just kind of like a choir it genial guy, kind of rare, actually, that he was so supportivebut he was. and and she checks case her dad wassupportive her he taught herw to drive even though everyone her village said like why are you letting a girl drive? like what are you doing? and hept quietly encouraging her to drive. so i think that is a testament omen couldn't have had kind of agency if there weren't also men supporng lives. any last question? yeah. yeah, i know. it just sounds so because you by like i came because i met my tia, my dad. i'm as you know.

so but he kept saying more women these twice. you, your favorite guys, female hero, because it's known now the guy who made a wonder woman uses an s&m free. i mean, what? but for some reason, i, i guess he was sort of like a so he wonder because he was a servant inside army. so i have a question which i. one more question er here. which one? i■ci think it's because a lot of them were created by men and so i don't necessarily resonate with them. like you said. thank you. can we get a quick fix? thank you. can we get a quick plug for, the first book? could you talk about thareal briefly just to remind everyone of your book, the heart is the first thing to thank you. the heart of the shipping sea is

d marriage in india, where i followed three couples for over a dmarriages. and i learned a lot from that book that i applied to this one. so anyways, thank you guys so much for coming out. i really those people and thank you solid state events.