A groundbreaking collective biography narrating the history of emancipation through the life stories of women of African descent in the Americas.

As If She Were Free brings together the biographies of twenty-four women of African descent to reveal how enslaved and recently freed women sought, imagined, an

"Smith spins out a sensuous, sinuous psychological thriller that compels attention to the final line."—Booklist Amelie and Janet are in love with the same man

During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, countless slaves from culturally diverse communities in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia journeye