Women of Colonial Latin America serves as a highly digestible and useful summary of the diverse life experiences of women in colonial Latin America, placing those experiences in a global context. Throughout the book, Socolow mediates the issue between the inconsistency of independent facts and the ambiguity of overgeneralization, illustrating both the restrictions on female behavior and the wide range of behaviors within those restrictions. Readers of diverse backgrounds will come away with a much deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities that have defined the lives of diverse women in the New World ruled by Portugal and Portugal.