Calpurnia Caesar asked a couple of questions about some of the women in the Oriental Women quiz here and I thought I'd leave my attempt at an answer here rather than in the Khantina, in case anyone else is interested.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond to your question, Calpurnia. I was thinking that one of my comprehensive books on women's history might have something about the Trung sisters or Trien Au, but they don't, and I'm not turning up any other books about them. Perhaps the following links will be of help to you in your research.

Trien Au
Trung Trac and Trung Nhi
Trung Sisters - wiki
Asian Women Warriors

I read part of the Tale of the Genji years ago and got bogged down in it, probably because I had no clue about the culture it was describing. It was sort of like reading War and Peace in the un-Anglicized version, where all the Russian characters had multiple name derivatives for the same person. That drove me nuts back then and the Russian names were far more intelligible at that point than Japanese names. From what I read, lots of people find this book quite enjoyable today. I must warn you though, it's HUGE! My copy has 1090 pages. I'm almost tempted to give it another go.