Book excerpt: This book is about seven African nurse pioneers in KwaZulu/Natal from 1920 to 2000. The author captures the early nursing activities of the 1920s to 1970 and then moves to nurses that entered the health services in the 1950s. The author also presents two nurses that worked outside South Africa i.e. did their pioneering nursing in Saudi Arabia and the United States of America. The author does not scoop nursing out of its context but creates a narrative that resonates in lived experiences in a world dominated by the Africanization of poverty, the feminization of poverty, globalization, racism and xenophobia.