Born into a global family, as she puts it Filomina Steady, Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic for her work in gender and culture, women’s rights and the African Diaspora. An Oxford University PhD graduate, she has taught at several American universities as well as the University of Sierra Leone. A former Deputy Director of the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women in Vienna, Austria, she has served as a Special Advisor to several agencies of the United Nations including on Women, Environment and Development to the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. She has contributed to four international plans of action for gender equality and the advancement of women, authored several books, monographs and articles, and given keynote addresses and presented papers at international conferences. She describes this memoir as her response to numerous requests from her family, faculty colleagues, alumnae, students and friends around the world.