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Nzinga Chapter Summary

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In sixteenth-century Angola, Portugal was waging war with the Ndongo tribe. When the wife, mother, and two sisters of the tribe’s king were captured, a brave and charismatic woman emerged to the rescue, Nzinga. The author, Dr. Moses L. Howard, a teacher in West Africa, tells a fictional retelling of Nzinga`s story and her eventual rise to power. Howard also provides an immense level of showmanship by keeping with some of the vividly bloody battles to an in-depth defiance of Nzinga to the Portuguese orders and commands. This novel shows loyalty to people, courage, strategic maneuvering, and ultimately the show of a woman way before her time. After reading the revelating tale of Nzinga, it is hard not to love and admire the woman. For everything …show more content…

This motion showed great courage and an appearance that she was a great leader and not to be made to it below any and especially on the floor. Many people would soon love her for this action and Howard tells how she is “one of the vital missing links in the history of Africans everywhere.” (3892/3984) Within the next years, he will collect references and start card files. To get a visa to fly to Angola was impossible because Angola was on the verge of a civil war. The country was deemed unsafe for travelers, so Howard traveled to Portugal instead. For a short period of time, Howard had the help of some English-speaking librarians, Angolan students, and museums history to help retrieve information. With as much information as he could collect, Howard felt short on many basic details from Nzinga and the people around her, so he began to study European mindsets of the period and responses from various African tribes. With all the new information, Howard felt as though completely understood the mindset of both the Africans and the Europeans, so he could fill in the blanks about what some of the Portuguese did and why they did it and Nzinga’s response to some of it and why she responded a certain way. This is how he was able to create the fictional retelling of the

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