"Believing that texts by women have the most to teach us about the limits of subjectivity and identity, Chancy fearlessly exposes the role of gender and the identity of Blackness in making women invisible. Her analysis playfully swirls throughout the text, an intellectual liveliness that defies its serious and challenging conclusions. Of the many poignant questions posed by the author, her ultimate quest is an exploration of how can the bodies of women in these three regions--Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic--be reclaimed, if at all, and can they, as figures of the nation, reformulate the body politic?. Drawing on the work of scholars in history, geography, sociology, political science, anthropology, women's sexuality, and gender studies, Chancy employs feminist, race, and literary theories to constructively reconceptualize the role of Black women. Moving effortlessly between these perspectives, Chancy arrives at a fundamentally different rationale for the absence of Black women in the historical record. Rather than identifying the notion of the degenerate African as the heart of the problem, she argues that it is the strong, courageous, adaptable, and living African, or in this case descendants of Africans, that remains the fundamental obstacle. This Blackness is menacing not because of racialist views of degeneracy, but rather because of the threat of the alternative epistemes and structures of power of the African presence, especially embodied by the first constitution of the Haitian nation, upsetting the drive for 'whiteness' reflected in the national discourses of Latin American countries.(10).

As with all pivotal works, Chancy has created an intellectual and activist road map for us to follow believing that these writers, their stories, and the painful truths they expose, will provide a new way forward." -- Patricia Harms, Brandon University -- Labour/Le travail, 74, 201412.