Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World

Early American Studies

by Jessica Marie Johnson

The story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power. It is shaped by the peculiar oppressions faced by African women and women of African descent. And it pivots on the self-conscious choices Black women made to retain control over their bodies and selves, their loved ones, and their futures. Slavery's rise in the Americas was institutional, carnal, and reproductive. The intimacy of bondage whet the appetites of slaveowners, traders, and colonial officials with fantasies of domination that trickled into every social relationship - husband and wife, sovereign and subject, master and laborer. Intimacy - corporeal, carnal, quotidian - tied slaves to slaveowners, women of African descent and their children to European and African men. In Wicked Flesh, Jessica Marie Johnson explores the nature of these complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by Black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world.

Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave-owning men, to recreate Black women's experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint-Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outposts of the Gulf Coast.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Race, Academic, Gender, American History

Audible Audio

First published August 28, 2020

Reviews

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson draws on records of colonial officials and slave-owning men (primarily) to explore the lives of African women and women of African descent, starting in the 1600's in coastal Senegal, moving through the Caribbean and to New Orleans through the early 1800's. She centers the women in this account and looks at the concept of freedom and the way women, both free and enslaved, leveraged their choices to assert varying levels of control over their own bodies and lives as well as those of their children. This is an academic read, well researched and meticulously supported in footnotes and data. I learned an incredible amount from this - there was so much that was completely new to me as well as a great deal that was presented from a different perspective than I had previously seen. One of the aspects that I most appreciated was the way Johnson used individual women's experiences to illustrate her point of view. Hearing about African women and women of African descent owning property and possessing significant economic influence and power in the 1600's, learning about women who sued for their freedom or economic rights, or seeing the way free women leveraged their own opportunities to secure a better economic standing - it was often these individual examples and stories that helped to connect me as a reader to the academic text.

"The idea of human freedom rooted in embodied, social, spiritual, and interconnected belief in humanity's possibilities emerges in African women and women of African descent's confrontation with its utter opposite -- racial slavery and imperial violence. As individuals, these women and others existed and evidenced the extraordinary possibilities that surfaced amid overwhelming odds."

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book's archival research into the lives of black women from the comptoirs of Senegambia to the quartiers of New Orleans was fascinating. Beyond the very important main emphasis on the key role played by women in brokering trade through their centrality in kinship networks, and its moral emphasis on black freedom, I found the arguments to be very vague to the point of nonsensical and often couched in jargon that was insufficiently explained in the context of the book (even if I am generally familiar with it from other works).

[Sasha (bahareads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

J.M. Johnson examines how African women and women of African descent used intimacy and kinship to construct and enact freedom in the Atlantic world. She is very very deliberate with her word choices. She constantly hammers her points throughout the text (specifically - gender, intimacy, and kinship). She does a great job of building her narrative. I enjoyed how she pushed 'imagined geography' beyond the bounds of land or landscapes to the body. She says the body is a geography.

Johnson says her narrative is not not an biography or micro-history, but a history practicing the same muddy freedom the women studied. It is a history of black women who experienced the contours of bondage and freedom as slavery and the slave trade began to unfold.

Her applied theory of null values was fasinating! She says Null values offers opportunity before reading along the bias grain for marking this space of indeterminacy. By identifying archival silences as null values surfaces slave owners and officials as responsible for missing and unacknowledged black life in the archive but resists equating the mission or in-applicable information with black death.

By focusing on how using the rule of intimacy and kinship played out highlights black women's everyday understanding of freedom as centered around safety and security for themselves and their children. It was a great book. I highly highly recommend.

[Mylynka · Rating 5 out of 5]

My grad class discussed this book tonight. I highly recommend it. It looks at the transatlantic enslavement of African women and how they negotiated their spaces and freedoms (such as they were/weren't), especially in New Orleans under the French, Spanish, then the United States. It is a tough, but good, read and very interdisciplinary, too.

[Danielle Charlemagne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johnson’s ability to weave together an archive of Black Women’s lives in Creole community to reveal technologies of kinship in diasporic intimacies, along slippages of race, and place —is no small undertaking. Johnson’s exploration adds new complexity to historic discourses of mere survival, toward the enterprising genius of Black women in and across the New Orleanian Atlantic.

[Juliana Maximiano Torres Carneiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did African women and women of African descent forged some sort of freedom when their world turned upside down? That’s one of the main questions Johnson answers in this impressive book. She sure shows her work: kin formation, marriages, geographical occupations, even crime! Good writing and solid use of black feminist theory to reveal the lives of enslaved women in the Americas.

[Sarah Duggan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading between the lines of court case details, Johnson unearths stunning tales of both free and enslaved Black women claiming agency in innovative ways. The adversity and oppression in colonial Louisiana were extreme, but they were neither helpless victims or wanton temptresses. There was a little too much sociological theory for my historian brain, but the case studies are unforgettable.

[Alexus McIntyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing and engaging historical account. I had the privilege of meeting the author in one of my doctoral classes where she discussed the book. She is a phenomenal writer and speaker. Highly recommend this book for anyone with a desire to better understand Black women's agency in early American history.

[Sally Kenney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much about the history of slavery, West Africa, New Orleans, and the Caribbean. Johnson's focus on women and women's agency and strategies for survival and freedom is powerful and persuasive, if deeply disturbing. She does a fabulous job of reading the silences of the archives.

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read leading people through complicated history highlighting the ways African women and women of African descent navigated multiple worlds featuring competing empires, and claims on their bodies from their husbands to corporations and nations that endeavored to commodify them.

[Joey Mopsink]

Parts of this are really well done but some aspects had me ¿ (the erotic is invoked in a way I find…. Confusing? She also maybe could have done a better job defining some of her terms)

Not sure how much of that is me not being super well versed in the historiography this is building on

[Lina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough examination of the gendered aspects of the racialized Atlantic slave trade. Johnson's research is intensive and her presentation of history is accessible and well-contextualized for a broad audience.

[Patrick Gillespie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m so sorry to anyone who has to be subjected to this.

[Anya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is unbelievably brilliant on every level. Like, unbelievably unbelievable.

Read for HIST180

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't tell you what this is about and I bought the book!

[Lisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly eye-opening, fascinating, and informative