The central thesis of this story is something I very deeply agree with (as a student of history who focuses, among other things, on issues of sexism and racism in Ancient Greece), and the premise really had some potential-- the parts about her random jumps, and her isolation in the present because of them, were definitely the strongest part of the story for me (and am I right to see an homage to Octavia Butler's novel Kindred in the particular mechanism of the time travel here? Given that was a novel that also dealt with issues of history and race and gender and history's reverberations into the present, I really liked that connection, although I think that ultimately Butler had a very different, in some ways more pessimistic take on the issue).
I do think, though, that the story had some big flaws in its execution. Makeisha complains at one point that history books are all about great men like George Washington, when there are tons of people just as important who aren't remembered by history. But her most fondly remembered past life is one where she's a powerful queen, which is another "great man" type of figure-- she's not white or a man, but she has much more power than the vast majority of people throughout history. And while studying and rediscovering women and people of color (and of course women of color!) in positions of power in history is great, too much focus on people in positions of power tends to reinforce, rather than contradict, the great man theory of history. It's also important to focus on the common people, the people who had no power and didn't get a chance to have power because they were oppressed for their gender, or their race, or their disability, sexual orientation, etc.
I guess this is me just wanting the story to be a different story than the one that was actually written, but I would've found it much more powerful, and much more effective in getting its point across, if the lives that had been dwelt on in most detail were the ones where she was not a powerful queen, but a more average person who did some awesome things we might not expect a historical woman to do, in terms of things that the modern stereotype thinks of as purely masculine, but also farmed and cooked and wove and took care of children, and still managed to have powerful friendships and/or love affairs with other women, the way Makeisha did in the queen storyline. Because that's what I find most compelling in academic works of history, a focus on trying to unearth the lives of the majority of people, and the things they did both in line with and contrary to our expectations. And at least in women's history (I know less about POC history beyond the actual period I study), that seems to be what the trend is in scholarship in the last decade or two at least-- rather than studying singular, notable women like Joan of Arc or Eleanor of Acquitaine, scholars will study, say, women beer brewers, even though that study is based on much scantier evidence. (Seriously, though, everyone should read Judith Bennet's work on brewsters-- i.e. female brewers-- in Medieval England. And I would love to hear a Podcastle story about medieval brewsters!)
Anyway, part of this is me being a stodgy history student and scoffing at the idea of polygamous lesbian weddings in medieval Germany, when historical accuracy doesn't really seem to be the point per se-- that section of the story had a sort of fairy-tale quality to me, and if I think of it as a fairy tale rather than a plausible history I like it a lot more. (And who knows, history is a long time and the world is a big place, and I would be thrilled if there actually was a polygamous lesbian wedding in medieval Germany that time erased). But I think the focus on the medieval queen story over other past lives really detracted from the story's point; I would've much preferred the focus to be on her life as a Viking raider woman or a poet or something-- someone who did achieve greatness and do things that certain types of modern people scoff at and say women-- and especially black women-- definitely didn't do, even though recent re-examinations of the evidence (in our world; apparently not in the story's world) say that they totally did do these things, and that there were probably more women who were Viking warriors or Renaissance poets for whom the evidence has been entirely erased. I think a focus on that story line would've been more in keeping with the thesis of Kameron Hurley's (awesome!) essay, too.
I know I'm mostly just complaining that this story wasn't written the way I would've written it-- but to me, it had lots of potential and deeply intriguing possibilities, but ultimately many of those potentials were unrealized.
