Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South

by Deborah Gray White

Book Overview

Living with the dual burdens of racism and sexism, slave women in the plantation South assumed roles within the family and community that contrasted sharply with traditional female roles in the larger American society.

This revised edition of Ar'n't I a Woman? reviews and updates the scholarship on slave women and the slave family, exploring new ways of understanding the intersection of race and gender and comparing the myths that stereotyped...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393314812
• ISBN13: 9780393314816
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Keep Your Eyes and Ears Open

This was a very different source of information. It reflect heavily on slave women on the plantation but of course it include the other enslaved folks as well. This was the author journey on what it must have felt like to be a female slave and how to endure all the injustices. There are a plethora of historical and sociology comments and even some of the anecdotes were rather funny. I was truly injured about Sojourner Truth since I once did her portryal of "Ar'n't I a Woman". I was aware of how she was treated but did not know that they made her expose her breast to prove that she was a woman. How cruel and shameful to experience such agony. I think it was nice that the author touched on many aspects of the female slaves and conclude that a lot of their rearing of children and other ways of life was in touch with their African heritage.

Sojourner's Truth Goes Marching On

February Is Black History Month. March Is Women's History Month I have mentioned more than once in this space, dedicated as it is to looking at material from American history and culture that may not be well-known or covered in the traditional canon, that the last couple of scholarly generations have done a great deal to enhance our knowledge of American micro-history. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the study of American slavery and its effects on subsequent history for the society and for the former slaves. The book under review represents one such effort in bringing the previously muddled and incomplete story of the triply-oppressed black women (race, gender and class) to the surface. As the author, Deborah Gray White, has pointed out in her introduction the general subject of the American slave trade, its place in the culture and the general effects of plantation life on the slave has been covered rather fully since the 1950's and 1960's. However, she set as her task filling the gap left by the mainly male historians (Elkins, Genovese, Apteker,et. al) who tended to treat the plantation slave population as an undifferentiated mass. Ms. Gray White undertook to correct that situation with this 1985 initial attempt to amplify the historical record. Although other, later researches have expanded this field (as a sub-set of women's history, at the very least) this is definitely the place to start. I might add that copious footnotes and bibliography give plenty of ammunition for any argument that the female slave has been under-appreciated, under-studied and misunderstood within the context of the historical dispute of the effects of slavery on the structure of the black family and black cultural life. Ms. Gray White set up a five pronged attack on the then current (up to 1985) conceptions about the role of the female slave: the always `hot button' and continuing controversy over her role as sexual "Jezebel" or asexual "Mother Earth" nurturing Mammy: her central economic role in the upkeep of the plantation and of the slave quarters: her critical role as "breeder" of children in order to maintain the laboring population and slave-owners' profits; her relationship to other females on the plantation and the division of labor among them by age, child-bearing status and health; and, the myths or misconceptions about black families, marriage and culture. As part of Ms. Gray White's argument she has addressed the thorny issue of the female slave as a sexual object (to both white and black men) on the one hand and her critical role of 'nurturer' to the next generation of slaves on the other. This is a tension that in many ways has not been resolved even in post-slavery times and so was worthy of her attention (and ours today, as well). Moreover, this ambivalence flows over into the kinds of work the female slave was expected to perform at various stages of her life as a "breeder" and the differential treatment she received by the slave-owner

GREAT READING FOR BLACK WOMEN

In reading this book for an assignment for a history class, I took to heart what the women went thru during the slavery days. You got the feeling of being there with them and feeling their pain. Ms. White has done an excellent job in bring out what really went on with women during slavery.

It Sheds light on the truth, FAIRLY

Debra Gray White has really done a fine job on this piece, she really tells the whole story of what slavery (Being a Black woman) is about. What I really liked about the author was that she wasn't one sided in writing her piece. She didn't totally demonize the white race, She just told what happened. She talks about how Black women are totally ignored when remeniscing about the act of slavery. I really liked her talk of Jezebel, Sambo, and Mammy as steroetype for Black women. After reading her piece I know see that black women were almost in a worse baot that men in the early years of the country. She talks about the things black women face like sexual harrasment they couldn't do anything about (Women were properties). She talks about a black woman (Mammy) raises a white kid, for the white kid to grow up to become a drunkered and blow off her head with a shotgun. One slaveowner said he'd rather "whip a slave woman than eat on an empty stomach". This novel really shows the intensity of negation black women faced.

Wonderful and brilliant

You will note that this title is reminiscent of another incredibly brave and brilliant writer and scholar, bell hooks, who wrote 'Aint I a Woman'. This book demonstrates that white males and their heterosexist patriarchy are mostly to blame for the maltreatment of Women of Color in the south. As a white woman, I am just so impressed and filled with gratitude at this tremendous work of insightful scholarship. As we all come together to combat the white male agenda of hatred, it is books such as this that bind us together in our struggle to be heard.

Does a great deal to illminate the struggles of slave women

I read this book recently for a college history class. Most interesting was the first chapter on the sterotypes of 'Jezebel' and 'Mammy'. Many works have focused on the stereotypes of male bondsmen, such as Sambo or the Nat Turner personalities, however few other works have focused on the misrepresented bondwomen. This gap in history is particullary because there seems to be a limited amount primary sources of the bondwoman's unique struggle to protect her children, herself from her master,mistress, and to assert herself as a women in a system that tended to androynize women. White tries to infer and collect as mnay relavent sources as possible.