Description |
1 online resource (257 pages) : illustrations, maps (black and white) |
Series |
Early American studies |
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Early American studies.
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Contents |
Introduction: the women in the water -- Tastemakers: intimacy, slavery, and power in Senegambia -- Born of this place: kinship, violence, and the Pinets' overlapping diasporas -- La Traversée: gender, commodification, and the long middle passage -- Full use of her: intimacy, service, and labor in New Orleans -- Black femme: acts, archives, and archipelagos of freedom -- Life after death: legacies of freedom in Spanish New Orleans -- Conclusion: femmes de couleur libres and the nineteenth century |
Summary |
"The story of freedom pivots on the choices black women made to retain control over their bodies and selves, their loved ones, and their futures. The story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power. It is shaped by the peculiar oppressions faced by African women and women of African descent. And it pivots on the self-conscious choices black women made to retain control over their bodies and selves, their loved ones, and their futures. Slavery's rise in the Americas was institutional, carnal, and reproductive. The intimacy of bondage whet the appetites of slaveowners, traders, and colonial officials with fantasies of domination that trickled into every social relationship--husband and wife, sovereign and subject, master and laborer. Intimacy--corporeal, carnal, quotidian--tied slaves to slaveowners, women of African descent and their children to European and African men. In Wicked Flesh, Jessica Marie Johnson explores the nature of these complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave-owning men, to recreate black women's experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint-Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outposts of the Gulf Coast. Centering New Orleans as the quintessential site for investigating black women's practices of freedom in the Atlantic world, Wicked Flesh argues that African women and women of African descent endowed free status with meaning through active, aggressive, and sometimes unsuccessful intimate and kinship practices. Their stories, in both their successes and their failures, outline a practice of freedom that laid the groundwork for the emancipation struggles of the nineteenth century and reshaped the New World."-- Provided by publisher |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
Notes |
Wesley-Logan Prize, 2021 |
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Lora Romero First Book Prize, 2021 |
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Description based on print version record |
Subject |
African American women -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 18th century
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African American women -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- Social conditions -- 18th century
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Women, Black -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History -- 18th century
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Women, Black -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- Social conditions -- 18th century
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Slave trade -- Social aspects -- Atlantic Ocean Region -- History -- 18th century
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African diaspora -- History -- 18th century
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African Americans -- Kinship -- History -- 18th century
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HISTORY / United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800).
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African American women
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African American women -- Social conditions
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African diaspora
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Race relations
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Slave trade -- Social aspects
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Women, Black
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Women, Black -- Social conditions
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SUBJECT |
Atlantic Ocean Region -- Race relations -- History -- 18th century
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Subject |
Atlantic Ocean Region
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Louisiana -- New Orleans
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Genre/Form |
History
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Form |
Electronic book
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ISBN |
9780812297249 |
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0812297245 |
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