The Power of Their Will

“Like no other work on the subject I am aware of, The Power of Their Will gives the reader the information needed to gain insights into the external lives of Cuban slaveholding women as they went about their prescribed tasks and permissible pleasures.”
—D. J. Walker, editor and translator of Manuel Ciges Aparicio’s On Captivity: A Spanish Soldier’s Experience in a Havana Prison, 1896–1898
 
“The Power of Their Will is engaging and draws on evocative examples primarily from traveler’s accounts, notarial records, and petitions for reversals of property confiscations during the Cuban War of Independence.”
—Adriana Chira, assistant professor of Atlantic World history at Emory University

“This is an accessible, illuminating study of women’s roles in sustaining slavery during its apogee in Cuba. It will surely find a wide readership, from undergraduate students approaching Cuban history for the first time to specialist historians.”
—Hispanic American Historical Review

“The Power of Their Will is a rich and valuable book and an essential acquisition for scholars seeking to understand more fully the intersections between gender and enslavement in Cuba, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world.”
—New West Indian Guide

“The concise nature of The Power of Their Will makes it an excellent choice for undergraduate or graduate-level seminars on Atlantic history, slavery, and women’s studies.”
—Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies

“This fascinating book explores the unique circumstances of white slaveholding women in 19th-century Cuba and the enslaved peoples they controlled. The subject of women slaveholders and their interactions with their enslaved workers has been largely overlooked in broader discussions of Cuban cultural history. These complex relationships were negotiated differently between urban contexts, such as Havana, and the rural contexts of coffee and sugar plantations. The urban/rural dichotomy outlined here examines the occupational differences of enslaved workers and reveals distinct strategies slaveholding women used to navigate the patriarchal structures of 19th-century Cuban society. Unlike their male counterparts, slaveholding women were anomalous, yet they actively upheld the coercive structures of slavery. Prados-Torreira skillfully investigates newspapers, travelers’ accounts, government documents, and other documentary sources to build her study. This is a must read for scholars of the Caribbean and the African diaspora. Essential.”
—CHOICE

“This engrossing and elegantly written study foregrounds the lives, importance, and influence of female slave owners in Cuba in the 1800s. It fills a gap in Cuban, women’s, and slave history that scholars have ignored. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, ranging from fiction, wills, and foreign travelers’ accounts, Prados-Torreira draws a compelling portrait of the largely Creole women who owned and profited from the enslaved. Her nuanced story makes clear the extent to which owning other human beings gave female slave owners power and status even as the patriarchal norms of Cuban society subordinated and limited them. It also reveals the complex relations that existed between the slave mistresses and the enslaved and, in the process, sheds new light on both groups on both a social and intimate level.”
—Margaret Power, author of Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964–1973