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Podcast: New Books in Gender
Episode: Kwasi Konadu, "Many Black Women of this Fortress: Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire" (Hurst, 2022)
Description: Kwasi Konadu's book Many Black Women of this Fortress: Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire (Hurst, 2022) presents rare evidence about the lives of three African women in the sixteenth century--the very period from which we can trace the origins of global empires, slavery, capitalism, modern religious dogma and anti-Black violence. These features of today's world took shape as Portugal built a global empire on African gold and bodies. Forced labor was essential to the world economy of the Atlantic basin, and afflicted many African women and girls who were enslaved and manumitted, bapti...