This book explores the construction of colonial society in the sixteenth and seventeenth century through the prism of gender, relying mostly on last wills and testaments, but also using court proceedings and notarial records from both national and local archives, principally in Lima and Trujillo (on the north coast of Peru). Graubart focuses primarily on Indian women, but, thoughtfully, provides context by looking at the actions of other women and men. The resulting study builds on, complements, and sometimes updates the work of María Rostworowski, Irene Silverblatt, Luis Miguel Glave, Karen Powers, Ann Zulawski, Kathryn Burns, Jane Mangan, Kimberly Gauderman and Elinor Burkett, to name but a few of the scholars working on women and similar themes.

Graubart's five chapters paint a picture of fast change in the first thirty years of contact and the sustained – but perhaps less dramatic – change that followed, up to the end of the seventeenth century. First, she establishes the general reorganisation of labour that affected the social relations of rural communities. In contesting the changes in the division of labour, she demonstrates how women engaged and shaped the colonial economy. The section on cloth production and its social meaning builds on and expands the seminal work of John V. Murra. In chapter two, the focus is on how rural to urban migrants creolised their world. Here, the author's detailed discussion of social upward mobility is singular, outlining biographies of successful adaptation. She finds that many native women had several careers over a lifetime, often starting in domestic service and then entering trade, but also simultaneously, at times, farming and renting rooms. Those with a surplus also occasionally bought slaves for the production of foodstuffs and maize beer. In the process, native women accepted Spanish values – acquiring land as private property, accumulating cash as wealth, and successfully learning to use and manipulate the Spanish legal system. This last theme, the use of the law, is further developed in chapter three, where Graubart's work details how wills were used to influence family members and punish them. Chapter four is an innovative look at urban fashion, where Graubart underscores clothes as a way to construct and designate new hybrid identities. In Trujillo and Lima, styles changed as the cultural influences of Spaniards, Africans and natives influenced each other, resulting in an overlapping of ethnic styles. Reminiscent of R. Douglas Cope's findings, her data show that the Spanish-imposed identity categories were not useful for many individuals. Her last chapter on native ‘usos y costumbres’ clearly shows the invention of tradition, especially in the seventeenth century. Indian women and their allies used usos y costumbres to produce their own history in dialogue with colonial state institutions. In fact, a penetrating questioning of the sometimes conflicting sources reveals the possible political considerations of the power contenders and the ways in which curacazgos (chieftainships) and communities were re-constituted. Like Karen Power's analysis of the wills of native leaders and would-be leaders in Eucador, Graubart's study of the wills of native female leaders, the capullanas (of Pirua), shows how natives manipulated narratives of their own history in order to claim legitimacy within the colonial structure. Thus, she concludes, natives both adapted to new rules and helped create them.

This is a solid piece of research. I can quibble over only a few points: the spelling of a name and the unquestioning use of a questionable source (Jorge Zevallos Quinones). I would suggest also that the use of a ‘family tree’ was not a colonial appropriation of the natives. Other research shows that the genealogies of native authorities usually traced a bloodline back to a founding ancestor and was, thus, a legitimising charter for rule before 1532. In short, Graubart is to be congratulated on producing a well-written tome that significantly advances our understanding of the first 150 years or so of the colonial urban dynamic, especially from a woman's point of view.