Examines changes in enslaved women's working lives as planters sought to increase birth rates to replenish declining laboring populations. Establishes that enslaved women in Jamaica experienced a considerable shift in their work responsibilities and their subjection to discipline as slaveholders sought to capitalize on their abilities to reproduce. Enslaved women's reproductive capabilities were pivotal for slavery and the plantation economy's survival once legal supplies from Africa were discontinued.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
199 p, "At the center of Jamaican-born Michelle, Cliff's novels is the exploration of the interplay between memory and history. Noraida Agosto examines Cliff's representation of memory as the part of history that has been suppressed because of its revolutionary potential. Memories of slave rebellions, for instance, were erased through omission from official historical accounts to discourage resistance among slaves. Cliff's novels are an attempt to recover these erased memories, which could generate resistance to modern oppressions. This recovery of devalued memories also entails a validation of non-elite beliefs, languages, and art forms in order to debunk dominant practices." (Book jacket);
Focuses on the performativity of Black beauty shame as it transforms or intensifies the meanings of parts of the body in Jamaica and its UK diaspora. Uses extracts from interviews with UK Jamaican heritage women. The women’s critique of the shaming event shows that shame is undone through dis-identification as speakers draw on alternative beauty discourses to produce new beauty subjectivities.