Malika Amanzi

Walking tour guide Malika Amanzi saw an inequity in the New Orleans tour guide industry, and she worked to fill it. “I was working for tour companies where I routinely reported to caucasian male bosses, who often disregarded the oral history I was getting from the BBIPOC [Black, Brown, Indigenous and/or People of Color] residents who still lived in New Orleans, and were multi-generational,” she tells GO. “I was being told there was ‘no way to verify their accounts’…I realized I was being pushed by my ancestors to start my own company, where we control the narrative of our own stories.” In 2022, Amanzi cofounded Anansi’s Daughters, which now offers three intersectional walking tours of New Orleans, including the city’s only Voodoo tour led by a high priestess of Louisiana plantation Vodou/Voodoo. Anansi’s Daughters has been featured on Entertainment Tonight, the BBC, and Condé Nast Traveler, and Amanzi hopes to grow the company by putting the tour guides first. She says, “The goal is to have steady work and turn a profit, enough that our guides can afford to only work for Anansi’s Daughters if they so wish, and fully be able to support themselves, while doing a maximum of one tour a day, four days a week. I would love to be able to offer healthcare and 401(k)/retirement options to my guides.” When asked how she handles setbacks and adversity, Amanzi quotes Audre Lorde: “When I use my strength in service of my vision…it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” –LE