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Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press) Kindle Edition

by Sophie White (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 19 ratings
See all formats and editions
In 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.
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  1. Print length
    303 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Omohundro Institute and UNC Press
  5. Publication date
    October 25, 2019
  6. File size
    27519 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A compelling and insightful chronicle of the lives of individual enslaved men and women in French colonial Louisiana."--Journal of Southern History



A remarkable achievement of historical interpretation from fragmentary documents, even sources as comparably rich as court transcripts, and . . . an impressive contribution to scholarship on the African diaspora in the French Atlantic."--H-Net Reviews



Any effort to review this work can only fall short because of the sheer beauty of White's written word and the profound depictions that she pens."--Journal of Early American History



Through meticulously recorded and preserved legal testimony derived from criminal trials in 18th-century New Orleans, White details how slaves perceived their own cultural reality as well as that of the ruling masters. The stories provided offer insight into their morals, societal values, and views on labor, violence, and familial bonds. The author intersperses her narrative with records in French and includes multiple paintings, samples of documented testimony, maps, and architectural sketches that help bring these figures and their plight to life. . . . Graduate students and professionals will find it uniquely enlightening."--CHOICE

Review

In a marvelous act of recovery, translation, and storytelling, Sophie White resurrects the sounds and sights of enslavement on the edge of the French Empire, revealing a place we might have thought we would never see. An original and startling book.--David W. Blight, Yale University

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07PWJ6ZMS
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Omohundro Institute and UNC Press (October 25, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 25, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 27519 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 303 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 19 ratings

About the author

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Sophie White

Sophie White

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Sophie White is Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA. She is an historian of early America with an interdisciplinary focus on cultural encounters between Europeans, Africans and Native Americans, and a commitment to Atlantic and global research perspectives.

Her most recent book, _Voices of the Enslaved_, has won 7 book prizes including the Frederick Douglass Prize for most outstanding book on slavery, and the American Historical Association's James A. Rawley Prize in the Atlantic world.

A native of Mauritius (Indian Ocean), she is currently researching a new book on red hair.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
19 global ratings

Top review from the United States

traci P
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich and engaging
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book is great. I am passionate about archives and research, and the author draws out so much of what is wonderful about archives. She puts the voices of an under-represented group of people-the enslaved-front and center to let us all hear their testimony, in their own voice, then interprets it with historic context.
She features complicated stories with painful implications for history and our times, but helps us to see the power and strength in the story, too.
So ultimately, in this book we have both the direct voices from the archive and the framing and synthesis of someone who obviously spent a lot of time at the research--
It's really just a treasure.
4 people found this helpful
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