This study of matrilineal Asante society provides a fascinating counterpoint to the much more prevalent scholarship on African women in patrilineal societies. Allman and Tashjian show how, as the colonial economic and political systems increasingly favored male interests, Asante women struggled to defend their economic rights (and) regain control over the products of their labor and their personal lives.

—Elizabeth Schmidt, Department of History, Loyola College

By bringing women into the mainstream of Asante historiography, the authors move us towards that singularly elusive goal: the realization of a comprehensive Asante social history.
—Ivor Wilks Professor Emeritus, African History Northwestern University

In an admirable collaborative effort, Jean Allman and Victoria Tashjian focus on commodity production, family labor and reproduction in colonial Asante. The authors demonstrate how broader social and economic forces—cash cropping, trade, monetization of the economy, British rule, and Christian missions—recast the terms of domestic struggle in Asante and how ordinary men and women negotiated that ever shifting landscape. By centering their analysis on women, Allman and Tashjian recover the broader history of a society whose past has largely been understood in terms of the state, political evolution, trade, and the careers of political elites. Based on the recollections of Asante women and men born during the years 1900 to 1925 and on rich archival sources, I Will Not Eat Stone captures the resilience and tenacity of a generation of Asante women and their struggles in defense of social and economic autonomy.