Taking Land, Breaking Land: Women Colonizing the American West and Kenya, 1840-1940

In spite of considerable similarities, the American West and Kenya have rarely been compared or contrasted by historians. This book examines the lives of women colonists on the American and Kenyan frontiers to demonstrate the importance of gender and race in shaping women's frontier experience. Taking Land, Breaking Land provides a broad-ranging discussion of migrant women and their roles on these frontiers, the difficult relationship between white colonizing women and their indigenous counterparts in both places, and the impact of white settlement on local culture in Kenya and the American West. (Review by Craig Hendricks)