Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Gwendolyn Mink's "Fierce and Fearless"

Fierce and Fearless: Patsy Takemoto Mink, First Woman in Congress is the first book-length biography of Mink, co-authored by historian Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and political scientist and Mink’s daughter, Gwendolyn Mink.

The authors applied the “Page 99 Test” to Fierce and Fearless and reported the following:

Page 99 of our book consists of these three sentences: “In her Capitol Hill office only a couple of days after returning from Paris, the first trickle of hate mail arrived. One postcard read, “I see you have appointment with Vietcong and North Vietnamese while you were in Paris. Did you go there for ‘instructions’?” This culminates the story of Mink’s feminist peace collaboration with sister congressmember Bella Abzug (D-NY). They traveled to Paris in 1972 to dialogue with Vietnamese representatives, most notably Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, to see if they might advance the cause of ending the U.S. war in Viet Nam. The trip aptly foregrounded how feminism, peace, and collaboration constituted the core of Mink’s policy and political commitments.

Anyone who has read the book will recognize one theme of Patsy Mink’s life that the sentences point to: bold and steadfast affirmation of principle even against naysayers and haters.

Page 99 concludes the third of eleven vignettes that provide first-person renderings of key political veins that run through Patsy Mink’s life. A curious browser who lands on this page might explore further to find that our book contains two narrative voices, one that bears witness and one that provides historical perspective. By dividing the story into clearly marked vignettes and historical chapters, we hope to give readers insight into the interwoven personal and political experiences of a public life.

Learn more about Fierce and Fearless at the NYU Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue