She was an eighteen-century black Surinamese woman worth millions of dollars. But she sought the forbidden: to marry a white man. Why, when she had so much? Elisabeth Samson's immense wealth puzzled many early historians who concluded that it could only have been the result of an inheritance from a master with whom she had lived and by whom she bad been set free.

We Slaves of Suriname integrates the experience of Suriname’s oppressed, multiethnic people into the greater history of South America and adds to the narrative of struggles against slavery, imperialism, and racism. In his scathingly defiant account, De Kom translates his personal anger at the brutal legacy of the Dutch into a beautiful, passionate history and call-to-arms.