When We Ruled by Paula Akpan
We are delighted to be hosting pioneering historian Paula Akpan talking to the brilliant Desiree Reynolds about her debut book When We Ruled, a game-changing history of twelve African queens and warriors, praised by Bettany Hughes as ‘a history the world needs’ and by Candice Carty-Williams as ‘the history we should have learned in schools.'
In this sweeping history, Akpan takes us into the worlds of queens and warriors who ruled vast swathes of the African continent, yet beyond the lands they called home, so few of us have ever heard their names.
When We Ruled follows their stories and how they came to rule and influence the futures of their people. With reigns spanning pre-colonial Nigeria to the farming villages of Rwanda, the hills of Madagascar to apartheid South Africa, these ruler's stories offer us fascinating insight into life in these regions. Akpan shows how societies thrived, expanded and fractured before colonial influence, while also exposing the deep scars colonisation left behind.
Paula Akpan (she/her) is a Black British historian and writer who gained a distinction in her fully funded MA in Black British History and who has credits in Vogue, Teen Vogue, The Independent, Stylist, VICE, i-D, Bustle, Time Out London and more. This is her much-anticipated debut book.
Désirée Reynolds, (she/her) a South Londoner up North, was brought up in Clapham, London to Jamaican parents and now living in Sheffield. She told her Mum, at about 8 years old, that she was going to write a book and has been writing ever since. She started her writing career as a freelance journalist for the Jamaica Gleaner and the Village Voice. She has gone on to write film scripts, poetry, flash fiction and short stories. Her first novel, Seduce, was published in 2013 to much acclaim by Peepal Tree Press. Her fiction is concerned with working class Black women, internal landscapes and a continuous struggle against the white, male gaze, notions of beauty, race and being. Committed to anti racism and intersectionality, she draws on her experiences of these to make her creative work. Her short stories have been widely published in various publications and online.