A Kick in the Belly

Enslaved West Indian women had few opportunities to record their stories for posterity. Yet from their dusty footprints and the umpteen small clues they left for us to unravel, there’s no question that they earned their place in history. Pick any Caribbean island and you’ll find race, skin colour and rank interacting with gender in a unique and often volatile way. In ‘A Kick in the Belly’, Stella Dadzie follows the evidence, and finds women played a distinctly female role in the development of a culture of slave resistance – a role that was not just central, but downright dynamic.