Domitila Barrios de Chungara, the daughter of a mine worker, was born in 1937, and lived most of her life in a tin mining camp in the Bolivian highlands. She was rendered motherless at the age of 10, and as a result Domitila was forced to leave primary school to care for her four younger sisters. Nonetheless, she graduated from the school of life and the Bolivian trade union movement, as an active participant in the "Housewives Committee" of the Siglo XX-Catavi tin mine trade union movement, from 1963 onward. In 1975 Domitila was invited to testify at the first United Nations Conference on Women, Development and Peace, and there, she met Moema Viezzer, who helped her publish her life story in the form of this book. After a 2-year exile in Sweden during Garcia Meza's government, Domitila and her husband returned to Bolivia, but shortly thereafter, alongside 30,000 others, her husband was laid off from his mining job. Domitila was thence forced to move from her native land, to the city of Cochabamba, where she died in 2013. She lives on through Let Me Speak!, which has been translated into 14 languages.