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Women, Kinship, and Intimacy in the Atlantic World - Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World Jessica Marie Johnson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp. 328. $34.95, hardcover (ISBN:9780812252385); $24.95, paperback (ISBN: 9781512823707); $24.95, ebook (ISBN: 9780812297249).

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Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World Jessica Marie Johnson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Pp. 328. $34.95, hardcover (ISBN:9780812252385); $24.95, paperback (ISBN: 9781512823707); $24.95, ebook (ISBN: 9780812297249).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2024

Mélanie Lamotte Open the ORCID record for Mélanie Lamotte [Opens in a new window]
Mélanie Lamotte*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
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Keywords

Atlantic WorldSenegalGambiaCaribbeanNew Orleanswomenslaveryviolencemarriagesexualitykinship
Type
Book Review
Information
The Journal of African History , First View , pp. 1 - 3
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Johnson's work is exceptional in that it embraces a Black feminist perspective to discuss the French Atlantic world. Black feminist perspectives usually focus on other contexts, and especially on the English-speaking world. For examples of groundbreaking publications on race, gender, and slavery in other contexts written from a Black feminist perspective, see: Davis, Angela, “Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves,” The Massachusetts Review 13, no. 1/2 (1972): 81–100Google Scholar; J. Fuentes, Marisa, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hine, Darlene Clark, “Female Slave Resistance: The Economics of Sex,” Western Journal of Black Studies 3 (1979): 123–27Google Scholar; E. Reddock, Rhoda, “Women and Slavery in the Caribbean: A Feminist Perspective,” Latin American Perspective 12, no. 1 (1985): 63–80Google Scholar; J. Spillers, Hortense, “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987): 65–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tinsley, Omise'eke Natasha, “Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic: Queer Imaginings of the Middle Passage,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, no. 2 (2008): 191–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For example, she draws on the work of African feminist scholars Fatou Sow, Ayesha Imam, Aminata Diaw-Ciss, and Awa Thiam. Moreover, her notion of “black femme” is inspirated by the theorists Kara Keeling, Kaila Adia Story, and Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley.

3 Though Johnson does not say it, these women were “Atlantic Creoles,” defined by Ira Berlin as Africans involved in the history of the Atlantic world, who were characterized by their “linguistic dexterity, cultural plasticity, and social agility.” Berlin, “From Creoles to Africans: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in mainland North America,” The William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 22 (1996): 251–88, here 263.

4 See Biondi, Pierre, Saint-Louis du Sénégal. Mémoires d'un métissage (Paris: Denoël, 1987)Google Scholar.

5 For examples of studies centering the Black female experience in the French Caribbean, see Gautier, Arlette, Les sœurs de Solitude. Femmes et esclavage aux Antilles du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moitt, Bernard, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635–1848 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. For examples of studies centering African women's experience in the French outposts of Senegambia, see: Jones, Hilary, “Women, Family, and Daily Life in Senegal's Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Towns,” in African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability, and Mobility 1680-1880, eds. Mariana Candido and Adam Jones (London: James Currey, 2019), 233–47Google Scholar; Lo, Aissata Ken, De La Signare à la Diriyanké sénégalaise. Trajectoires féminines et visions partagées (Dakar: L'Harmattan, 2020)Google Scholar; Vial, Guillaume, Femmes d'influence: Les signares de Saint-Louis du Sénégal et de Gorée, XVIIIe–XIXe siècle (Paris: Hemispheres, 2018)Google Scholar.