Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xviii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 1-12

3. Precolonial West Africa: Context and Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

      PDF

   2. “Dey Fooled Dem to Come”: Seduction and Trickery in the African Slave Trade

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 15-28

   3. “Before the Arrival of the Good Ship Jesus”: African Women in Precolonial West Africa

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 29-50

4. Historical Grotesque Realities

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 51-51

      PDF

   2. “Trouble Done Bore Me Down”: Intimate Violence against Enslaved Women

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 53-70

   3. “Dat Man Grabbed Me an’ Strip Me Naked”: Enslaved Women and Sexual Violence

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 71-84

   4. “In the Company of My Sisters”: Violence among Women in the American Colonies

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 85-112

   5. “Fix Me Jesus”: Enslaved Women and Self-Violence

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 113-144

5. Yearning for the Beautiful

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 145-145

      PDF

   2. “However Far the Stream Flows It Never Forgets Its Source”: Five Strategies of Subversion and Freedom

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 147-193

   3. “The Current Continues”: Four More Strategies of Subversion and Freedom

      • Renee K. Harrison

      Pages 195-231

6. Back Matter

   Pages 233-282

   PDF

Draws on mid-seventeenth to nineteenth-century slave narratives to describe oppression in the lives of enslaved African women. Investigates pre-colonial West and West Central African women's lives prior to European arrival to recover the cultural traditions and religious practices that helped enslaved women combat violence and oppression.

• religion and gender

"An excellent and refreshing contribution to studies about the cultural and social sources of violence.This comprehensive book should be read by everyone concerned about the prevalence of violence and the need for healing in our world today." - Delores S. Williams, Author of Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk

"An ambitious historical excavation of the violence and religion of U.S. slavery! With unflinching honesty Harrison presents a wide range of stories about the brutality black women slaves experienced and creatively organizes those storieswithin unique, womanist frameworks." - Traci C. West, Author of Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women's Lives Matter

"Harrison done gone and started something now! With this searing, soaring, and majestic work she has created an intellectual and spiritual clearing and invited our ancestral forebears to speak . . .This book deeply reaches and teaches us in places beyond words.The heretofore unsung witness of our ancestors, our mothers, bids us enter into healthy and life-affirming streams in our own day and time.Ashé!" - Alton B. Pollard, Dean and Professor of Religion and Culture, Howard University School of Divinity

"This book is timely for a public hungry for fresh perspectives on race, violence, and healing . . .Crafted in poetic prose, the book offers full-bodied scholarship, original interpretations of violence and resistance, and daring proposals for action.It deserves to be widely read." - Mary Elizabeth Moore, Dean and Professor of Theology and Education, Boston University School of Theology

"Scholarly, Harrison captures the rhythmic moral, beauty, and power of black women s protest tradition of the slave era. She does this without romanticizing the aesthetic and moral flaws of either black victims or white victimizers." - Riggins R. Earl, Jr., Professor of Social Ethics, Interdenominational Theological Center

Renee K. Harrison is Assistant Professor of African American and U.S. Religious History at Howard University School of Divinity, USA.

Policies and ethics