This work addresses issues relating to the gender, ethnic and cultural factors affecting the ways in which enslaved Africans and their descendants interpreted their lives under slavery and thereby created communities with a shared sense of identity. The book examines how identities were formulated under slavery and the ways in which the struggle to escape slavery and its legacy continued, after abolition, to affect the lives of descendants of slaves. The introductory essay explores an approach to the study of the African diaspora that looks ourward from Africa and places the following chapters in the context of the historical literature.