This is is an annotated English translation of the 1764 edition of the Compendio de la vida ejamplar de la Venerable Madre Sor Teresa Juliana de Santo Domingo, the Vida of Sister Teresa Chicaba (c. 1676–1749). Written by Fr Juan Carlos Miguel de Paniagua in 1752 as documentary evidence to promote Chicaba's beatification, the Vida describes the life of Chicaba, a West African (possibly Ewe) woman, who was enslaved as a child, baptised Teresa in Sao Tome and brought to Spain, where she entered the household of Juliana Teresa Portocarrero y Meneses, the duchess of Arcos. When her mistress died in 1703, she emancipated Teresa and bequeathed her an annuity which enabled her to enter religious life. The Vida stresses that despite her piety and financial means, Teresa, being an African woman, was rejected by several religious orders because of her skin colour, before the convent La Penitencia of the Order of St Dominic in Salamanca accepted her as a tertiary nun. There she gained a reputation for her piety, charity and healing gifts, which led the order to initiate a process of beatification (in vain) shortly after her death.

The Vida is preceded by an extensive introduction (117 pages) by Sue Houchins and Baltasar Fra-Moliero, which situates the Vida in its socio-political as well as religious context, discussing, for example, how the Vida negotiates contemporary attitudes and racialist mentalities towards Africans and her social status as (formerly) enslaved. This is followed by a second section of the introduction which presents a chapter by chapter discussion of the Vida, which aids the reader to understand the various details and references in the Vida in their wider context.

The editors have opted for a strong literary take on the text, situating the Vida as part of a wider body of religious hagiographies in the Spanish world (both in Europe and the Americas) and as part of the corpus of narratives of the African American diaspora, most notably North American slave-narratives. They for example dedicate several pages to the question how to identify ‘Chicaba's gendered and raced “voice” in the hagiographic structure’ (p. 27) as well as her ‘resistance’ (p. 33). Remarkably absent is a discussion of Chicaba as part of a larger group of Africans in eighteenth-century Europe (for example, Wilhelm Amo, Jacobus Capitein, Christian Protten, Frederik Svane, Ottobah Cuagoano) and the role that these Africans played in the European imagination of Africans as well as in the interpretation and propagation of Christianity (in Africa and Europe). The fact that Chicaba is a literate woman and a Roman Catholic nun makes her place among this group all the more significant.

All in all, compliments for Houchins and Fra-Moliero whose painstaking editorial and translation work has ensured that the Vida is now available to English-speaking audiences, offering them a fascinating glimpse in the life of yet another eighteenth-century African (and a woman for that matter).

Sr Teresa Chicaba's remains, her portrait as well as her act of profession, are still extant in the Las Dueñas convent in Salamanca where they were taken in the early nineteenth century. The convent also has a small museum dedicated to Sr Teresa Chicaba which is well worth visiting.