Nzinga Quotes

Nzinga didn’t miss a beat in replying that black women need to identify racism wherever we find it, especially our own internalized racism, when we’re filled with such a deep self-loathing we turn against our own

Nzinga had suggested her relationship history of blonde girlfriends might be a sign of self-loathing; you have to ask yourself if you've been brainwashed by the white beauty ideal, sister, you have to work a lot harder on your black feminist politics, you know

Willing to fight for freedom alongside her warriors, Nzinga demonstrated bravery, intelligence, and a relentless drive to bring peace to her people. A true anti-terrorism strategist and an original freedom fighter. Queen Nzinga reflects the dignity of the Ndongos and Angola in particular, but of Africa and all women in general.

Dominique began to regret allowing Nzinga to do everything and make decisions for her she started to yearn to do the housework herself, yearn to cook, to clean, to do a job that was more intellectually demanding her life was becoming empty of purpose other than to love Nzinga unconditionally, and, increasingly, obey her even the simplest things became a source of difficulty

Amma considered thanking Nzinga for informing her she was mentally enslaved, and told her that African peoples were referred to as black long after the word made its appearance in the English language, so it makes no sense to retroactively impose racist connotations on to its everyday usage, and if you do, you're going to drive yourself mad and, I'm sorry to say, everyone else with you

I read about Queen Nzinga who ruled in Central Africa in the 16th century resisting the Portuguese. I read about her negotiating with the Dutch. When the Dutch Ambassador tried to humiliate her by refusing her a seat Nzinga had shown her power by ordering one of her advisers to all fours to make a human chair of her body. That was the kind of power I saw. and the story of our own royalty became for me a weapon.

Nzinga then launched into the racial implications of stepping on a black doormat rather than over it, of not wearing black socks (why would you step on your own people?), and don't ever use black garbage bags, she instructed, as for blackmail, blackball, black mood, black magic, black sheep, black-hearted, I never wear black underpants, for example, why crap on myself? I'm surprised you all don't know this already

she had to give up her independence and submit completely? wasn’t that being like a male chauvinist? Dominique felt like an altered version of herself after a while, her mind foggy, emotions primal, senses heightened she enjoyed the sex and affection – outside in the fields when summer arrived, wantonly naked in the heat, unworried about anyone coming across them, what Nzinga called Dominique’s sexual healing, as if she’d

When the Atlantic slave trade began decimating the Kongo, that nation was under the reign of a ManiKongo named Nzinga Mbemba Affonso, who had gained the throne in 1506 and ruled as Affonso I for nearly forty years. Affonso’s life spanned a crucial period. When he was born, no one in the kingdom knew that Europeans existed.

When the Dutch ambassador tried to humiliate her by refusing her a seat, Nzinga had shown her power by ordering one of her advisers to all fours to make a human chair of her body. That was the kind of power I sought...

Nzinga is so wise and knowledgeable about how to be a liberated black woman in an oppressive white world that's she's opening my eyes to well, everything, it's like she's Alice and Audre and Angela and Aretha rolled into one, seriously . . .

My professor, Linda Heywood, was slight and bespectacled, spoke with a high Trinidadian lilt that she employed like a hammer against young students like me who confused agitprop with hard study. There was nothing romantic about her Africa, or rather, there was nothing romantic in the sense that I conceived of it. And she took it back to the legacy of Queen Nzinga—my Tolstoy—the very same Nzinga whose life I wished to put in my trophy case. But when she told the story of Nzinga conducting negotiations upon the woman’s back, she told it without any fantastic gloss, and it hit me hard as a sucker punch: Among the people in that room, all those centuries ago, my body, breakable at will, endangered in the streets, fearful in the schools, was not closest to the queen’s but to her adviser’s, who’d been broken down into a chair so that a queen, heir to everything she’d ever seen, could sit.