Table of Contents

Elizabeth Catlett and the form of emancipation Joyce Tsai; Introduction Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder; Part I. Claiming Emancipation during the Rise of New World Slavery: 1. Margarita de Sossa, sixteenth-century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico) Chloe L. Ireton; 2. Paula de Eguiluz, seventeenth-century Puerto Rico, Cuba, and New Granada (Colombia) Nicole von Germeten; 3. Reytory Angola, seventeenth-century Manhattan (US) Susanah Shaw Romney; 4. Elizabeth Key, seventeenth-century Virginia (US) Taunya Lovell Banks; 5. Hannah Manena McKenney, late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Bermuda and New Providence, Bahamas Heather Miyano Kopelson; 6. Juana de Godinez, seventeenth-century Lima, Peru Michelle A. McKinley; Part II. Experiencing Freedom during Slavery's Expansion: 7. Judith and Hannah: eighteenth-century Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia (US) Honor Sachs; 8. Sarah Chauqum, eighteenth-century Rhode Island and Connecticut (US) Margaret Ellen Newell; 9. Marion, eighteenth-century Natchitoches, Louisiana (US) Sophie White; 10. Anna Maria Lopes de Brito, eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, Brazil Mariana Dantas; 11. Juana Ramírez, eighteenth-century Oaxaca, New Spain (Mexico) Sabrina Smith; 12. Juana María Álvarez, eighteenth-century New Granada (Colombia) Ana María Díaz Burgos; 13. María Hipólita Lozano, eighteenth-century Lima, Peru Tamara J. Walker; Part III. Envisaging Emancipation during Second Slavery: 14. Bessy Chambers, nineteenth-century Jamaica Sasha Turner; 15. Minerva, nineteenth-century Texas and Louisiana, US and Mexico Alice L. Baumgartner; 16. Cécile Fatiman and Petra Calabarí, late-eighteenth-century Haiti and mid-nineteenth-century Cuba Aisha K. Finch; 17. Mary Ellen Pleasant, nineteenth-century Massachusetts and California, US Kellie Carter Jackson; 18. Gabriela, nineteenth-century Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Mariana Dias Paes; 19. Maria Firmina dos Reis, nineteenth-century Maranhão, Brazil Maria Helena Pereira Toledo Machado; Part IV. Enacting Emancipation in the Aftermath of Slavery: 20. María Remedios del Valle, nineteenth-century Argentina Erika Edwards and Florencia Guzmán; 21. Lumina Sophie, nineteenth-century Martinique Jacqueline Couti; 22. Emma Lane Coger, nineteenth-century Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri (US) Sharon E. Wood; 23. Laura E. Davis Titus, nineteenth-century Norfolk, Virginia, US Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander; 24. Carrie Williams Clifford, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Ohio, US Cathleen D. Cahill; Bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

A groundbreaking collective biography narrating the history of emancipation through the life stories of women of African descent in the Americas.

About the Author

Erica L. Ball is Professor in the Department of History and the Black Studies Program at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is co-editor of Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, and Memory (2017) and author of To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class (2012). Tatiana Seijas is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University, New Jersey. She is the co-author of Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics (2017) and author of Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians (2014), which won the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians' Book Prize. Terri L. Snyder is Professor in the Department of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. She is the author of The Power to Die: Slavery and Suicide in British North America (2015).

Reviews

'This collection is a long-awaited addition to the scholarship on women of African descent in the Americas. Gathering the finest women historians working on the history of slavery and emancipation in several countries of the Americas, this volume brings to light the groundbreaking trajectories of black women in regions as diverse as Colombia, Brazil, Ohio, and Virginia. Very often forgotten in the historiography, these women were pioneers in fighting for their rights since the era of Atlantic slavery. This book will be a mandatory reading in any undergraduate or graduate course on women, slavery, and emancipation in the Americas.' Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University, Washington, DC

'… the most pleasant and notable merit of the work is the plurality of stories reconstructed in very different American geographies, as well as from historical sources that are also diverse.' Estela Roselló Soberón, Hispanic American Historical Review (translated from Spanish)

'… an exciting and provocative anthology of twenty-four essays that explore both the meaning of freedom and the strategies to obtain it for individual women, mostly of African descent, within slave societies in the Americas or in the immediate post-abolition context.' Karen Y. Morrison, Journal of African American History