Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana
Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana
White, Sophie
product information
Condition: New, UPC: 9781469666266, Publication Date: Sun, August 1, 2021, Type: Paperback ,
join & start selling
description
8In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, and escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded.

Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, Voices of the Enslaved draws us into Louisiana's courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents to understand how the enslaved viewed and experienced their worlds. As they testified, these individuals charted their movement between West African, indigenous, and colonial cultures; they pronounced their moral and religious values; and they registered their responses to labor, to violence, and, above all, to the intimate romantic and familial bonds they sought to create and protect. Their words--punctuated by the cadences of Creole and rich with metaphor--produced riveting autobiographical narratives as they veered from the questions posed by interrogators.

Carefully assessing what we can discover, what we might guess, and what has been lost forever, Sophie White offers both a richly textured account of slavery in French Louisiana and a powerful meditation on the limits and possibilities of the archive.

reviews

Be the first to write a review

member goods

No member items were found under this heading.

notems store

Ari J.'s Kinky, Curly Crown

by Drew, Ain Heath

Hardcover /Hardcover

$18.00

Jefferson Memorial

by Carr, Aaron

Paperback /Paperback

$9.71

listens & views

NO MORE DADDY (EP)

by DOP

12-INCH SINGLE

out of stock

$12.99

JUJU

by JUJU

COMPACT DISC

out of stock

$16.99

Return Policy

All sales are final

Shipping

No special shipping considerations available.
Shipping fees determined at checkout.