Swahili women's initiatives in gender equality and feminism are informed by shared memories of history and collective action. Political narrative first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as Muslim women vocalized their shared past in an effort to challenge negative stereotypes of their political and economic capabilities. Their earliest “heroines' narrative” celebrated the lives of pre-Portuguese Swahili women rulers such as Mwana Mkisi (Mombasa) and Mwana Khadija (Pate) and showed the exceptions to female exclusion from publi…