Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America

by Harrison, Renee K.

• ISBN13: 9780230618466
• ISBN10: 0230618464
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-09-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The historical records and stories of enslaved African women have both creative and life-affirming resistance strategies for how women of the past have dealt with and healed from violence. This book draws on mid-seventeenth to nineteenth-century slave narratives to describe the depths of multi-dimensional oppression and violence in the lives of enslaved African women. Harrison investigates pre-colonial West and West Central African women's lives prior to European arrival in order to recover those African-derived aesthetic forms, cultural traditions, and religious practices that helped enslaved women combat violence and oppression. The nine strategies of resistance offered as modes of resistance employed by enslaved women are viable modes for modern-day women

Author Biography

Renee K. Harrison is Assistant Professor of African American Religious Practices and Culture. She received her Ph.D. at Emory University in the Department of Religion in the interdisciplinary area of Persons, Community, and Religious Practices with a focus on West African & African American Religious Practices and Culture, and Black Feminist/Womanist Thought. She recently completed a Lily grant post doctoral fellowship in Practical Theology and Religious Practices at Emory. Her work focuses on spirituality and religious practices of healing.

Table of Contents

List of Map and Tables	p. ix
Preface Ancestral Scratchings	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Introduction Ancestral Vibrations	p. 1
Precolonial West Africa: Context and Perspectives
"Dey Fooled Dem to Come": Seduction and Trickery in the African Slave Trade	p. 15
"Before the Arrival of the Good Ship Jesus": African Women in Precolonial West Africa	p. 29
Historical Grotesque Realities
"Trouble Done Bore Me Down": Intimate Violence against Enslaved Women	p. 53
Enslaved Women and Domestic Violence: "Dey wuked me lak a dog an' beat me somepin turrible"	p. 56
"Dat Man Grabbed Me an' Strip Me Naked": Enslaved Women and Sexual Violence	p. 71
"In the Company of My Sisters": Violence among Women in the American Colonies	p. 85
Enslaved Women and Sisterhood Violence: "Misses would beat and stomp away, with all the venom of a demon"	p. 86
Enslaved Women and Sistah-hood Violence: "That woman was simply mean"	p. 93
"Fix Me Jesus": Enslaved Women and Self-Violence	p. 113
Yearning for the Beautiful
"However Far the Stream Flows It Never Forgets Its Source": Five Strategies of Subversion and Freedom	p. 147
"The Current Continues": Four More Strategies of Subversion and Freedom	p. 195
Notes	p. 233
Author Index	p. 265
Subject Index	p. 273
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