Today, we learn about the women who inspired the Dora Mijale in Marvel’s Black Panther (2018) and the stars of The Woman King (2022); the Ahosi of Dahomey. Wives of the Leopard.

Sources

@alokvmenon, https://www.instagram.com/p/CLAW4W4BmWy/

Ana Lucia Araujo, Dahomey, Portugal and Bahia: King Adandozan and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Slavery & Abolition (2012)

Ana Lucia Araujo, The Woman King Softens the Truth of the Slave Trade, Slate (2022)

Dr. Oyeronke Oyewumi The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse (1997)

Lize Okoh, Meet the Dahomey Amazons: The All-Female Warriors of West Africa, Culture Trip (2018)

Meghan Weddle, “So, says I, we are a brutal kind,” Emory University

Melian Solly, The Real Warriors Behind ‘The Woman King, Smithsonian Magazine (2022)

Mike Dash, Dahomey’s Women Warriors, Smithsonian Magazine (2011)

Robin Law, “Dahomey and the End of the Atlantic Slave Trade” (Boston: Boston University African Studies Working Papers)

Robin Law, The ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey, (1993)

Stanley Bernard Alpern, Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey (1998),

Stuff You Missed in History Class, The Amazons of Dahomey, (2015)