Africa and the Afro-American experience

the long version

Caribbean history is replete with the achievements of women in the region's ceaseless dynamic struggle "to be." Yet their continuing creative contributions to the process have been too frequently treated as a footnote to the text of that history of liberation - itself a celebration of the invincibility of the human spirit against such odds as...the persistent exploitation of labor, which is still being resisted through contemporary battles for workplace justice, equality, recognition, and status. We Paid Our Dues, Lynn Bolles's well researched and compassionate study explores, reveals, and analyzes the deep feelings of that long beleaguered other half of the Caribbean denigrated population. They now speak with their own voices...as leaders in the trade union movement that has underpinned Caribbean political, economic, and social development ever since...Caribbean society realized that the mobilization of the creative energies of its women, as well as its men, was the only sure route to social justice, human dignity, and the sustainable decencies of civil society. It is the creative, constructive participation of Caribbean women in this awesome quest for such a society that, after all, constitutes the "dues" they have paid, and Dr. Bolles's expert chronicling of this fact is a most timely and welcome addition to the literature in this area of growing concern.