Forgotten by popular history and overlooked by academic research, this is the story of the American Maroons. This book identifies who the Maroons were, what made they choose their way of living, their individual and collective lives and most importantly how they organised themselves to survive. The author illustrates how their particular story fits into the larger narrative of slave resistance and defiance of the status quo slave society. We see how the Maroons dared to create their own alternative to what the country had delineated as black men and women's place, and how their freedom and autonomy was the very repudiation of the basic tenets of slavery and the era itself.
Award-winning historian Sylviane A. Diouf's latest book features exhaustive research and shines a light on black resistance and self-sufficiency that no one seems to talk about.