"Caribbean women - black, white and brown, free and enslaved, migrants and creoles, rich and poor - are assembled in this book and their lives examined as they battled both against male domination and among themselves for social advantage." "Professor Beckles uses the method of narrative biography with its appealing sense of immediacy of women's language, script and social politics, to expose the gender order of Caribbean slave society as it determined and defined the everyday lives of women. He also seeks to explore the effectiveness of women's actions as they searched for freedom, material betterment, justice and social security."--Jacket.