Toya: Dahomey

By Gabriel Souleyka

She wanted to be a warrior. She became one. Then they came to take her.

Born in the Kingdom of Dahomey, around 1730, Toya has one dream: to join the Mino, the king's elite corps of women warriors, feared across the entire coast for their discipline and ferocity. Years of brutal training. One burning ambition. She gets there. She becomes exactly what she always wanted to be. Then the slave traders come.

Sold at Ouidah. Chained. Loaded onto a ship bound for Saint-Domingue, Into the hold of a world that no longer sees her at all. Toya Dahomey is the first volume of an Afrofeminist historical saga about the woman who forged the Haitian Revolution, in silence. A coming-of-age story and a novel of resistance, about what a warrior carries within her when everything else is stripped away.

Victoria Montou, known as Toya, was a real historical figure.Born in Dahomey, trained as a Mino warrior, enslaved in Saint-Domingue, she raised and trained Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the founder of Haiti. This is her story.

Her story continues in Saint-Domingue in Volume II: Toya Haiti.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 2487324155
• ISBN13: 9782487324152
• Release Date: September 2024
• Publisher: Tioleja Editions
• Length: 466 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"