"An authoritative and compelling articulation of historical, political, legal, social, creative, and ubuntu-responsive conceptions and navigations of power, leadership, and empowerment by women of African descent. Distinguishing and celebrating past and current symbols and markers of transformative leadership in the face of unrelenting prejudice and injustice, Carole Boyce-Davies forecasts the twenty-first century as the era of inclusive, equitable, and ubuntu-responsive leaderships and worlds. This rare global picturing in a single publication responds to challenges of and offers a model for studying corresponding and consonant yet dispersed experiences and enterprises of women of African descent."
— Besi Brillian Muhonja, James Madison University
"Carole Boyce-Davies always escorts us across the geographical borders that routinely impede the development of global engagements with transformative ideas, especially theories and practices generated by Black women. This study of the politics of Black women’s leadership–in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, as well as North and South America–is yet one more example, an impressive work for its unusual expansiveness and interdisciplinary grounding in such literary genres as memoir, autobiography, and political writing."
— Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Pioneering feminist scholar Carole Boyce-Davies' book is a groundbreaking, cogent, meticulously researched, penetrating analysis of Black women's political leadership around the globe, including their feminist writings and activism, in a variety of cultural contexts—Africa, U.S., Brazil, and the Caribbean. Boyce-Davies challenges readers to re-imagine the complexities of our engagements and entanglements with racist and patriarchal paradigms in various historical periods. Included are provocative interviews and rare portraits of powerful Black women, if maligned or neglected, including ‘alternative president’ Winnie Mandela (South Africa), Madame President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia), and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (Presidential candidate, U.S)."
— Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Women's Research & Resource Center at Spelman College
"With the publication of Black Women’s Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power, Carole Boyce-Davies has proved again why she remains one of the most respected Black feminist literary theory scholars of her generation. From her volumes on the political life of Claudia Jones—revealing her intellectual and artistic credentials as a visionary, to her volumes on Black feminist struggles to decolonize the academy; she continues her quest in this volume by referencing the experiences of Black women in power through biographical and autobiographical reflections, speeches and essays—including the US Vice President Kamara Harris and Diane Abbott MP—the first Black woman to enter UK Parliament to reveal why the struggle for leadership and power for Black women still continues in the 21st century. This brilliant volume reaffirms Boyce-Davies as an authority on the theory of radical transnational Black women and power. A must-read for all feminist students and theorists internationally."
— Nana Ayebia Clarke, Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited
"Carole Boyce-Davies gifts us with an intellectually satisfying, compelling, celebratory, yet critical encyclopaedic work that dissects and reconstructs Black women’s leadership and occupation of varying polarities of power across Africa and its diasporas. She deploys an eclectic range of Black feminist analytical tools and frameworks while foregrounding pioneering leadership practices of earlier generations of women leaders. She establishes the defining historical contributions and contemporary continuities of Black women exercising power in Africa, North and South America, the United Kingdom, and the Caribbean. The analysis moves seamlessly across geographic, historical/contemporary, and disciplinary sites while assessing the power practices of nineteenth century iconic Black women leaders, twentieth century trailblazers, and twenty-first century powerbrokers. This is mandatory, yet pleasurable reading in cultural studies, sociology, Black studies, Black feminist theorizing and Black women’s leadership."
— Eudine Barriteau, University of the West Indies