Many Black Women of this Fortress

‘[A] vivid, dramatic discourse that draws readers into the plots outlining each of [these] three Black female experiences.’

‘A welcome and much-needed addition to the history of women in the Portuguese Empire and of West African women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries […] an ideal text to use in undergraduate studies as well as graduate courses.’

‘This remarkable book recovers from the Portuguese archives the life histories of three women who lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in present-day Ghana. Konadu, an outstanding historian of his generation, presents a lucid, riveting and transformative portrait of gender and politics in the face of the violence of European empires at the dawn of modernity.’

‘A fascinating picture of the entangled early modern world. Using the rich archival material found in inquisition records, this book provides an important new window onto the daily lives of three Black women in sixteenth-century coastal West Africa, and in Europe.’

‘A refreshing, remarkable excavation of the kind of life stories typically lost to history. Methodologically creative and bold in reach, this is a book that forces us to rethink both what we know and what we are able to know.’

Kwasi Konadu is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Endowed Chair and Professor at Colgate University, teaching worldwide African histories and cultures. He is the author of Our Own Way in This Part of the World: Biography of an African Community, Culture, and Nation; and co-editor of The Ghana Reader.