Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive

Early American Studies

by Marisa J. Fuentes

In the eighteenth century, Bridgetown, Barbados, was heavily populated by both enslaved and free women. Marisa J. Fuentes creates a portrait of urban Caribbean slavery in this colonial town from the perspective of these women whose stories appear only briefly in historical records. Fuentes takes us through the streets of Bridgetown with an enslaved runaway; inside a brothel run by a freed woman of color; in the midst of a white urban household in sexual chaos; to the gallows where enslaved people were executed; and within violent scenes of enslaved women's punishments. In the process, Fuentes interrogates the archive and its historical production to expose the ongoing effects of white colonial power that constrain what can be known about these women.

Combining fragmentary sources with interdisciplinary methodologies that include black feminist theory and critical studies of history and slavery, Dispossessed Lives demonstrates how the construction of the archive marked enslaved women's bodies, in life and in death. By vividly recounting enslaved life through the experiences of individual women and illuminating their conditions of confinement through the legal, sexual, and representational power wielded by slave owners, colonial authorities, and the archive, Fuentes challenges the way we write histories of vulnerable and often invisible subjects.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Race, Gender, Grad School, Womens

232 pages, Hardcover

First published May 26, 2016

Reviews

[Katie Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brutal, and excellent. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of enslaved women.

"Perhaps resistance to the violence of slavery is survival, the will to survive, the sound of someone wanting to live or wanting to die. But the struggle against dehumanization is in the wanting. And sometimes, we can hear it."

[Cas · Rating 5 out of 5]

fuentes is a genius. completely expanded my perception of slavery and all of the gender/racial dynamics that are within it. the interrogation of archives and sources was incredible to see. it takes someone special to get what she was able to get from the sources she was working with.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book asks the question, how can you recreate the lives of enslaved women when the archive has obliterated their lives? The ways I which Fuentes is able to illuminate those lives using what little sources are available is masterful. I found myself in tears often as I read this book. As a genealogist and budding historian I am reconsidering everything I thought I understood about archives and sources.

This book also details how much effort went into developing a system of racism to dehumanize, in gender, objectify, and sexualize the bodies of enslaved women. By extracting the few names she could, Fuentes attempts to reconstruct the lives of a few women, contextualizing their history within the place and time.

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

A study of using the archives to illuminate the silences within them. Fuentes looks at enslaved women in Barbados as her case study.

"This study probes the construction of race, gender and sexuality, the machinations of archival power, and the complexities of "agency" in the lives of enslaved and free(d) women in colonial Bridgetown, Barbados."

Using different cases to show a larger issue in the archives, whether it is the silence about women or how white women as shown as powerless victims in older historiographies or honour and sexuality, or how enslaved women were considered genderless in relation to motherhood, female vulnerability, and feminity or how the hypervisibility of certain WOC obscures their everyday life and creates caricatures of them.

This is a book that deserves multiple readings. It relates directly to areas of interest in terms of enslaved people and the silences the archives produce. Reading against the grain and between the lines is exactly what Fuentes does in DL.

The methodology Fuentes uses can be helpful for those who only have fragments of people in archives. The way she builds the possibilities around enslaved runaway Jane in the first chapter had me in awe. Her writing can be heavily didactic and theoretical. Some parts are hard to read, especially if you are not used to historian jargon. DL is worth reading and highly useful for historians of marginalized and archively-silenced people.

"History is produced from what the archive offers. It is the historian’s job to substantiate all the pieces with more archival evidence, context, and historiography and put them together into a coherent narrative form."

[Kaitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed how I view silences in the historical archive. It is absolutely a read that is worth it.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one went pretty far over my head, to be honest. Definitely not a trained historian (I went the English route instead), but I admired the structure and dedication to thorough end notes.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic read. Fuentes’ argument is articulate and excellently laid out for readers to follow. I highly, highly recommend this book for historians or other professional academics that engage with archival sources. This book is extremely brutal but necessary in every way.

[Ella Ru · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m speechless

[Anna Arnsberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating analysis of archives thx for the suggestion nicole kayla dressler

[Constance · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is phenomenal. As a new historical researcher, Fuentes lays out a methodology that makes it possible to work with the "fragments" and traces of Black women in the archive. She circumvents the normalization of archival violence of Black women and unveils the power and production at play in the writings of Black women's histories. Even if so many Black women were unable to tell their stories, Fuentes gives voice to those who probably never thought that their stories would be told. It is clear that the ancestors were with Fuentes as she was writing this. Her book convinced me that the work of a historian is first and foremost spiritual. Historical storytelling relies on gut feelings, intuition, prayers, and meditation, especially when grappling with lives marred by violence. This is a must read for anyone doing historical research and for anyone interested in the intersections of gender, blackness, and slavery.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to criticize Fuentes for the accessibility of Dispossessed Lives. It's certainly not a book for the layman researcher or a book you want to pick up without some introduction to the subject. In many other works I find this acceptable, as the elite in a field sometimes need converse with each other at the highest academic level and that's fine. That being said, a lot of it felt unnecessary here. Past that it's a fantastic book that cleanly slices most everything in the established archive in half. Just be ready to reread certain sections... a lot.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Dispossessed Lives. Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive, Marisa Fuentes studies slavery in the Caribbean, innovating in at least three different realms: firstly, by focusing on urban spaces rather than plantations, exploring the particularity of urban slave society, and how the city landscape reproduced violence towards slaves, becoming intimately linked at their core. Secondly, by using a microhistorical approach that focuses on the microcosm of Bridgetown (the capital city of Barbados) to illustrate a much bigger picture of slavery. Last, by centring her research on women, principally enslaved, but also taking into account the role and agency of white slave-owner women, who have often been ignored by historiography or exempt from any responsibility in this dark chapter of history.
But besides the thematic innovation, what makes Fuentes’ work stand out is her methodological and ethical proposal. This book, through engaging with critical studies of archival power, black feminist epistemologies, archival research and slavery studies, traces how the archival records have distorted the lives of enslaved women, often only present in accounts of punishment, disfigurement, and fugue. The author takes a firm stance in favour of conducting historical research on the lives of those whose presence in the archive is extremely fragmentary, arguing that focusing on the scarce sources left behind by 18th-century slaves, while important in itself, creates an incomplete picture of slavery. Ignoring these other women is to perpetuate the epistemic violence that originated in the knowledge produced exclusively by white individuals, the only surviving trace of their lives. This knowledge, additionally, is itself a medium for the transfer of the violence inflicted on their physical bodies, into the “documents that count, condemn, assess, and evoke them”, which are received by the researcher.
To study the "disempowered black woman," Fuentes chooses to rely solely on documents produced by the agents of her disempowerment. In other words, she brilliantly demonstrates how the absence of archival materials produced by slaves doesn't constitute a true obstacle in studying slavery, and merely reflects on the tyranny upon which slavery, but also archive-keeping and the historical discipline itself are built.

[RLC]

This is an important read for anybody interested in the history of enslaved women. It is a brutally honest recounting of the lived experience of enslaved women in the Caribbean. Stylistically, it is a very well executed book. One of the most intriguing additions, in my opinion, is Fuentes' use of the names of individual women in her chapter titles. In chapter 1 we are introduced to Jane, a fugitive slave, through an ad that had been put out to aid in her capture and return to her master. The add is only two lines long but according to Fuentes can tell us much about Jane's individual lived experience as a slave. For example, Fuentes argues that the scars left on the bodies of enslaved women is a way in which their story can be understood and shared to others. I believe that this is a book that should be better incorporated into the study of slavery. Any book written about the lives of enslaved women should be given specific attention, as the history of enslaved women is often missing from the history of slavery as a whole.

[Eliya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuentes offers excellent examples on how to extrapolate and analyze archival sources in a way that allows the researcher to garner more insight into the lives and experiences of people who are often erased from historical memory. This book focuses on the various experiences of free and enslaved women in an urban setting in Barbados. Throughout the book, Fuentes focuses on the stories of several women whose fleeting appearances in the historical record carry far more weight and insight into this Caribbean slave society than a traditional reading might establish. Fuentes’ way of challenging the limitations of traditional reading and piecing together more complete pictures of women’s role in the slave system makes this book useful for historians who are interested in understanding more about the history of marginalized people.

[Alexander Skezas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Constructing the history of Barbadian slavery in a sociological lens, Fuentes discusses the oppression enslaved women endured in through various topics. They range from sexual exploitation, race, gender and the gruesome violence that occurred in the 18th century. Fuentes explains the history of a brutal institution that left enslaved women in the cusp of life and death everyday from their masters. One important aspect she emphasizes in the beginning of the book is that the scarred body of the enslaved is not only a demonstration on the evils of slavery, but was an archival piece of history illustrating one of humanity’s darkest parts of history. If you want to delve deep into some postmodernist feminist theory, I reccommend reading this book to those who wish to take a look at some micro-histories of slavery in 18th century Barbados.

[David York · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of book that I love encountering during college history courses. A deep dive, case study style book that truly unearths stories and narratives by writing in a very unique style that I found both engaging and informative as I worked my way through the book. The chapter by chapter approach, focusing on a variety of different women but remaining within the same relative area of Bridgetown, allows Fuentes to get creative with her writing while also not losing the primary goal of showing the reader the brutality that enslaved women faced. The book moves at a good pace, and the only real critical element that I have is that maybe it is not for everyone. The book has a very historical nature, and even though I greatly enjoyed the structure of the book, some more casual readers may not.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author gives us, as the reader, a first hand look at women who are enslaved. As scholars and even students know; women, especially enslaved women, and their stories are left out of the master narrative. She takes the approach looking into the enslaved women in Barbados under the English crown. Throughout the book she starts with mini slave narratives, stories of the enslaved women such as Molly in Chapter 4. We get an introduction piece and an introduction to the argument all at once. Which is something I appreciate and enjoy, because then it does not feel like a textbook. She also is bringing to light the British colony we don’t learn about in U.S. history and revolutionary in bringing a new look into the life of enslaved women.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great for historians or students of history. For the average reader looking for a great narrative story to read, this just isn’t it. Fuentes deals with the nitty gritty of archival research in Barbados while trying to relay what life was like for enslaved women in the urban setting of Bridgetown. Unlike histories on prominent white men, or even regular white men involved in history, Fuentes openly deals with the silences of enslaved women in Barbados’ archives, despite the fact that enslaved women made up the majority of Barbados’ population. By focusing on several figures that appear once or twice in the archives, Fuentes does a fantastic job of displaying the social, gender, and racial hierarchies of colonial Bridgetown that can be reflected in aspects of modern life.

[Tara Wilson]

Personally, I found Fuentes’ research of the micro history of Bridgetown, Barbados enslaved and free women fascinating. Fuentes’ goal was to reveal the enslaved women’s story of urban Caribbean enslavement and dedicated to enslaved women who tend to be mislooked when examining enslaved history. She boldly combindes the archive, it’s silences, black feminist theory and critical studies of history to reexamine these women’s lives and experiences through a organized thematic approach that touched on enslaved runaway, brothels, households and economic, and genered punishments and exploitation. Fuentes’ achieves her intended goal to illustrate how enslaved women were violated throughout their bodies and the body of the archive.

[Rayan Ramirez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marisa J. Fuentes’s Dispossessed Lives is a focused historical piece on slave narratives within Bridgetown, Barbados. Moreover, it is an examination on the narrative of women who had been enslaved in Barbados. As a whole, the book serves as a device to recount slave narratives and assert them at the front of slave history. Additionally, Fuentes puts forward the notion that the system of slavery was based on gender and was made to keep women within it. It is a combination of theory meeting history as Fuentes examines the gendered history that is involved in telling the slave story. I’d recommend this book to any person or scholar who wishes to be given new perspectives of slavery within the Americas.

[NicoleKat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good historian is able to find historical facts and logically recite them. A great historian can retell the seemingly obsolete stories and turn them into rich imagery of character and place; Fuentes is a great historian. I have never read a more extensive examination of enslaved women, let alone one so condensed geographically. Every chapter felt like reading an obituary, an in-depth, sympathetic view of one's life, along with the unforeseen consequences of their stories. I have never felt so invested in a historical character's life as I did when reading this book. Truly a trailblazer for the interdisciplinary work of women's studies and history.

[Jordan D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive is a wonderfully written account of the lives of women in the Atlantic slave system. Fuentes uses the case study format to tell the reader not only the story of the women she's writing about but how slavery was gendered and what that meant for the captured females. What stands out is the integration of the resources she uses in her narrative. They are not only there to bring validity to the her argument, they bring a character to her writing that is unique. Her book is a raw look at gender, control and power. It will leave an impression on anyone who reads it.

[Jenna Geraghty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book focuses on the perspectives of enslaved women and gives insight into why collecting this information can be difficult. This book looks at the lives of both freed and enslaved women in Barbados. The population of Barbados is important because the population was primarily women, both white and black. This helps us to understand the daily lives and formation of identity for multiple women during this time. This book brings to light how complex women's history can be and is a must-read for those who want to study marginalized groups in history.

[John McElligott · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Fuentes does a magnificent job of portraying female slaves’ lives. Fuentes portrays the lives of female and male slaves in a completely different light and demonstrates the main differences between the two. One part of her method I particularly enjoyed was the use of quotes at the beginning of each chapter. This serves as an excellent way to engage the reader and works to generate interest. Fuentes is an excellent writer and did a spectacular job with this book and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

[Shayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books gets an insane amount of shit in the academic world and I really think people need to calm down. I find that historical reimagining, while having its pitfalls, is also incredibly beneficial in telling the stories of subaltern communities who didn’t make it into the archives. While I do not think that I would be good at doing this type of work, I think that Fuentes did it well and this opens to the door for other historians to rethink how we wrote history.

Everyone chillllllll.

3.7/5 stars

[Alexander B · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is correct that it is very difficult to write a history from nothing. Unfortunately, it means that the resulting history is about nothing. Sure you can say a million different ways that the narratives written by enslavers are unreliable, but that’s just obvious, isn’t it? Many reviewers say she ingeniously reconstructs the lives of a few women, but she obviously doesn’t. She reconstructs the unreliable narrative and points at all the hypothetical ways it’s probably wrong. At the end of this exercise we still don’t know any more of the truth.

[Eric Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tough slog. Reads like it could or should have been a 30 page article rather than a book of this length. The author is a strong proponent of reading against the grain to find stories left out or otherwise ignored in the archive, which certainly has value and a place in the field of history. But much of this work seems to go beyond reading against the grain and veers instead towards unwarranted, if not reckless, speculation.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really compelling use of the archives to capture the lives and experiences of enslaved women in the west indies. fuentes is offering a new way of interpreting sources, so the book is laden with theory and sometimes reads more like a theory book than historical narrative. still, i found this really compelling and the details were vivid.

[Elissa Branum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Historiographic intervention: new reconstruction methodology ("along the bias grain" p. 7); enslaved women as focus in urban slavery; agency in context (owning and owned women)

I would say the best example of successful critical fabulation we have thus far

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The violence in this historical monograph made reading it emotionally difficult. The reality of it can not be ignored though; violence against Barbadian enslaved women is evidenced in archival violence and absences.