Nzinga, in history and legend, is a brilliant leader during a time of violent upheaval. This fictional biography brings to life the Angolan culture in a flourishing African kingdom, now lost, where early explorers' maps of West Africa call out: "Here reigned the celebrated Queen Nzinga!"

“The fascinating story of arguably the greatest queen in sub-Saharan African history, who surely deserves a place in the pantheon of revolutionary world leaders.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Though largely unknown in the West, the seventeenth-century African queen Njinga was one of the most multifaceted rulers in history, a woman who rivaled Queen Elizabeth I in political cunning and military prowess. In this landmark book, based on nine years of research and drawing from missionary accounts, letters, and colonial records, Linda Heywood reveals how this legendary queen skillfully navigated—and ultimately transcended—the ruthless, male-dominated power struggles of her time. “Queen Njinga of Angola has long been among the many heroes whom black diasporians have used to construct a pantheon and a usable past. Linda Heywood gives us a different Njinga—one brimming with all the qualities that made her the stuff of legend but also full of all the interests and inclinations that made her human. A thorough, serious, and long overdue study of a fascinating ruler, Njinga of Angola is an essential addition to the study of the black Atlantic world.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates “This fine biography attempts to reconcile her political acumen with the human sacrifices, infanticide, and slave trading by which she consolidated and projected power.” —New Yorker “Queen Njinga was by far the most successful of African rulers in resisting Portuguese colonialism...Tactically pious and unhesitatingly murderous...a commanding figure in velvet slippers and elephant hair ripe for big-screen treatment; and surely, as our social media age puts it, one badass woman.” —Karen Shook, Times Higher Education

SORROWLAND ORACLE by Ayodele Nzinga is a compendium of spells, incantations, prayers, and their translations into the event of being Black in modernity while standing at the crossroads of revolutionary transformation and the birthing of a new paradigm on the eve of an apocalypse. The 2nd edition includes a new preface. Poetry. African & African American Studies. California Interest.

Addressing in depth the reality that women of color, particularly Black women, face compounded exploitation and economic inequality within the neoliberal university. More Black women are graduating with advanced degrees than ever before. Despite the fact that their educational and professional opportunities should be expanding, highly educated Black women face strained and worsening economic, material, and labor conditions in graduate school and along their academic career trajectory. Black women are less likely to be funded as graduate students, are disproportionately hired as contingent faculty, are trained and hired within undervalued disciplines, and incur the highest levels of educational debt. In Lean Semesters, Sekile M. Nzinga argues that the corporatized university—long celebrated as a purveyor of progress and opportunity—actually systematically indebts and disposes of Black women's bodies, their intellectual contributions, and their potential en masse. Insisting that "shifts" in higher education must recognize such unjust dynamics as intrinsic, not tangential, to the operation of the neoliberal university, Nzinga draws on candid interviews with thirty-one Black women at various stages of their academic careers. Their richly varied experiences reveal why underrepresented women of color are so vulnerable to the compounded forms of exploitation and inequity within the late capitalist terrain of this once-revered social institution. Amplifying the voices of promising and prophetic Black academic women by mapping the impact of the current of higher education on their lives, the book's collective testimonies demand that we place value on these scholars' intellectual labor, untapped potential, and humanity. It also illuminates the ways past liberal feminist "victories" within academia have yet to become accessible to all women. Informed by the work of scholars and labor activists who have interrogated the various forms of inequity produced and reproduced by institutions of higher education under neoliberalism, Lean Semesters serves as a timely and accessible call to action.

I Am Royalty a series created to tell the stories unheard presents, I Am Queen Nzinga: The Warrior Queen. The story of a young girl that rose to power to fight for the freedom of her kingdom.

The fictionalized biography of Betty Shabazz (Malcolm X's wife) as a young girl in post-WWII Detroit, as written by her daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, with Renée Watson.

This unparalleled companion volume uses the remarkable artifacts, images, and documents of the United States National Slavery Museum to trace the entire history of slavery in North America, from the societies of ancient Africa to the repercussions still faced by Americans today and to celebrate the perseverance and ultimate triumph of a people.