Mother Nganga: Women Experts in the Bantu-Atlantic Spiritual Cultures of the Iberian Atlantic World

“Mother Nganga” examines the spiritual status and roles attributed to women in Central African societies during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to assess long-term continuities and changes in status and roles attached to women spiritual experts of African descent in Brazil and Cuba. While we can identify a larger Bantu-Atlantic spiritual complex that connected women experts in all three locations, we also see that the particular experiences of community formation in these distinct places generated different conceptualizations of the roles of women experts over time.