Published for the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of independence, this volume was assembled by the Ligue Féminine d'Action Sociale from biographies solicited across Haiti. Marie-Thérèse Colimon opens by observing that a history written by men about men keeps a peculiar silence about the other half of the population, and sets the League the task of drawing up a balance sheet of what Haitian women have contributed to the national patrimony. Dantès Bellegarde's preface recalls his own speech to the Constituent Assembly of 1950 arguing for civil and political equality, and defines the politics women were claiming as work on education, health, housing, food and the treatment of women in prison. The portraits that follow run from Anacaona through Marie-Jeanne and Claire-Heureuse to teachers and organisers of the twentieth century, chosen for activity that reached past the household into the life of a whole community.