While great strides have been made in documenting the historical experiences and actions of middle-class white women in United States, scholarship on racial ethnic women has begun to appear only in recent years as women of color and other scholars have broadened the base of inquiry in women's history. Without a window into the lives of racial ethnic women our understanding of the meanings and dynamics of various forms of social inequality will be woefully inadequate.

Now, in this illuminating volume, Karen Anderson offers the first book to examine the lives of women from three important ethnic groups in the United States - Native American, Mexican American, and African American women - revealing the specificities and commonalities of their experiences. Changing Woman provides the first comparative history of women from these racial ethnic groups, explaining changes in the sources and nature of the oppressions in their lives and tracing their progress over time.