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whatshanireads's review against another edition
5.0
This is a wonderful book that elucidates the full participation and complicity of white women in the atrocities perpetuated against enslaved African descended people. It also upends the myth that white women were innocent bystanders of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This thoroughly researched book provides heartbreakingly horrifying facts about white women who participated in the chattel slave trade, and outlines how they too participated in enslaving others for economic and familial gain. I do wish there was more of a line connecting this participation to the continued participation of white women in white supremacy today, but completely understand that this book is to illuminate how white women were very much owners and traders of the enslaved. Very good read that I would highly recommend!
kittyray18's review against another edition
5.0
This was a HARD read, not beacuse of the quality of the book but beacuse the depiction of violence and abuse by women against women is on every page. It is truly horrific. This should be required reading in US highschools.
lin_reads_things's review against another edition
5.0
intriguing and upsetting. A very important book I think everyone needs to read.
thatbooklady714's review against another edition
5.0
An extremely detailed account of the ways white women were actively involved in the slave trade despite popular narratives which paints them as ignorant or uninvolved. I am now quite aware of the ways white women supported, benefited from and were complicit in the slave trade.
lackingwit's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
5.0
cookiereadsswiftly's review against another edition
3.0
High 3 - this is very important information about how women actively participated in the procurement and treatment of slaves in the US. However, I felt that a significant portion of the book was trying to litigate this idea against a history of excusing or minimizing women’s role - that’s great, but it makes for slightly tedious reading. I felt that it could have focused more on reports and the stories inherent in this issue than on the basic premise and its confirmation. I’d love to read more on the subject but less on the repetitive defense of the facts.
amyjoy's review against another edition
4.5
Really excellent deep dive into first hand accounts of women as active participants in owning and managing slaves.
carrietmills's review against another edition
5.0
This book flips the script on the way we think of white women's relationship to slavery, moving away from the fairytale image of the innocent and naïve to the intentional and often malicious. Chockful of meticulously cited examples, this book holds that owning and subjugating enslaved people was a critical component of antebellum life for monied white women, north and south alike.
While the writing style is academic, it's certainly readable with each example written in its own narrative arc for effect. Examples range in all levels of treatment, but this book is much more than simply highlighting tales of abuse (or its inverse) inflicted by white women on enslaved people. Instead, Jones-Rogers looks at the larger framework and its implications that lead to and support white women as slaveowners.
Here are some secondary arguments covered in this book:
- Antebellum children of slaveholding adults learned at a very early age to maintain the power imbalance through violence and manipulation, and this was considered a critical piece of their upbringing regardless of gender.
- Women often held the rights to enslaved people closely, guarding their "property" from husbands and partnerships through contracts and litigation.
- Some women employed a more "benevolent" approach to slave management likely driven by a better understanding of the financial implication of death or dismemberment. (If a woman owned people but not property, her treatment of the people shifts as they are the center of her prosperity.)
- The idea that slave markets were too brutal for white women is undermined both by their participation in the buying and selling of enslaved people, but also insofar as the level of brutality within a slave market was already met or exceeded in day-to-day violence that white women were already privy to.
Secondary to all of this is the implied lazy patriarchal thinking of older historians who allowed their biased lenses to guide the national narrative for so long. Jones-Rogers doesn't just pull up a few counterexamples, she unearths the costs and benefits to show the economic and self-preserving logic behind it all.
As an aside: As great as this book is for its academic merit, many of the stories will continue to haunt me. I just... Ooof.
While the writing style is academic, it's certainly readable with each example written in its own narrative arc for effect. Examples range in all levels of treatment, but this book is much more than simply highlighting tales of abuse (or its inverse) inflicted by white women on enslaved people. Instead, Jones-Rogers looks at the larger framework and its implications that lead to and support white women as slaveowners.
Here are some secondary arguments covered in this book:
- Antebellum children of slaveholding adults learned at a very early age to maintain the power imbalance through violence and manipulation, and this was considered a critical piece of their upbringing regardless of gender.
- Women often held the rights to enslaved people closely, guarding their "property" from husbands and partnerships through contracts and litigation.
- Some women employed a more "benevolent" approach to slave management likely driven by a better understanding of the financial implication of death or dismemberment. (If a woman owned people but not property, her treatment of the people shifts as they are the center of her prosperity.)
- The idea that slave markets were too brutal for white women is undermined both by their participation in the buying and selling of enslaved people, but also insofar as the level of brutality within a slave market was already met or exceeded in day-to-day violence that white women were already privy to.
Secondary to all of this is the implied lazy patriarchal thinking of older historians who allowed their biased lenses to guide the national narrative for so long. Jones-Rogers doesn't just pull up a few counterexamples, she unearths the costs and benefits to show the economic and self-preserving logic behind it all.
As an aside: As great as this book is for its academic merit, many of the stories will continue to haunt me. I just... Ooof.