Saturday, February 15, 2014

What is a reaction to or review of Jennifer L. Morgan's Laboring Women?

Morgan's book, entitled Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery,is an in-depth examination of the role of women in early American slavery during the Colonial period. It highlights how women's specific roles in slavery as agricultural laborers and as child-bearers meant that their experience of being enslaved was much different to that of men.
Her research is very detailed and focuses upon the experiences of enslaved African women. She explores their role in West African societies, their experiences during the middle passage, and their lives on plantations in the Americas.
The general reception of the book has been favorable. Scholars have commended her on her meticulous research and suggested that the book is a great contribution to our overall understanding of the mechanisms of slavery in early American History. Some have suggested that her work challenges existing ideas about slavery, particularly considering the role of women in slave resistance.
However, the main criticism of the book is that despite painstaking research, the central idea that African women experienced slavery in many different ways to men is not a new one. Several scholars have suggested this difference has already been explored by other historians, and therefore Morgan's ideas are not unique.
However, the scope of her research is impressive, and she is praised for covering a wide geographical area from West Africa to the Caribbean to mainland America.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2018/march/historian-jennifer-morgan-on-race--gender--and-how-the-past-info.html

https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14030.html

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