About
About Njinga: Queen Njinga ruled over what is now Angola between 1624 and 1663. She achieved many significant things during her reign, was a skilled diplomat and negotiator, known to heads of state and the Catholic Church in Europe. With her military and diplomatic nous, she fended off the Portuguese merchants and soldiers intent on capturing land and slaves from her control.
About the Book: This biography weaves together the strands of Njinga’s life using a range of primary sources in several languages.
About the Author: Linda Heywood is Professor of History and African American Studies at Boston University, where she has been teaching and researching since 2003. Before arriving at BU she was a professor at Howard University. She is a world-renowned historian of modern Africa and the history of the transatlantic slave trade.
Dr. Heywood is the author of Contested Power in Angola (2000), editor of and contributor to Central Africans Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (2002), co-author with John Thornton of Central African, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of America (2007), and co-editor of African Americans in U. S. Foreign Policy: from the Era of Frederick Douglass to the Age of Obama (2015). She has contributed articles on African history and genealogy to the Huffington Post and The Root, and has consulted on several museum exhibitions and television programs.