Book review of closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South

Book review of closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South

Stephanie M.H.Camp’s closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South is a book which describes the experiences that enslaved women went through the dark days of slavery in America. The book describes that slave women had an important role to play in the process of seeking liberation from slavery. Enslaved women were an integral part of the slave rebellion which ultimately led to abolition of slavery in America.   According to the author, the book highlights the plight of black African women slaves as a way of seeking to address the historical injustices of the slavery era in America. Furthermore, the author seeks to establish the importance of enslaved women in the creation of what is now the United States.

The book has joined a growing number of literate works from scholars who have described the experiences of enslaved women in the Americas. Stephanie M. H. does a thorough analysis of the bonds created by the resistance of women through movements, boundaries and places. She does this by the use of oral histories, planter papers, and other sources which are familiar to her readers. The book documents the efforts of planters and slave masters to confine their slaves and curtail their movement it what she refers to in her book as “the geography of containment”. Furthermore, the author describes that enslaved women were able to move about despite the restraints put in place by their masters. They were also able to overcome what the author refers to in her book as “rival geography”, which was the rivalry that existed between slaves from different geographical backgrounds and the “perpetual conflicts” that arose between the slaves and their masters as a result of their movement. According to the book the “rival geography did not provide autonomy for the slaves but instead, it created a conducive environment for the growth of creativity among the slaves, rest, play and with time it leads to resistance to the slave masters domains or geographical boundaries.

The author’s conceptually ambitious piece of work works very well with her elaborate description of experiences of women slave. She does this very well considering the limited sources of first-hand experiences from individuals who witnessed or were part of the slavery heritage. Chronologically, the book explores the torturous decades and the Civil War which had a lasting impact on women slaves in America. The author seems to be deeply versed in comparative slavery historical studies as well as colonial studies which enable her to properly put into context the experiences women slaves went through during these periods of American history. She does this by making an intelligent analysis of colonial architecture, law, nineteenth-century paternalism and the black Atlantic. Furthermore, she analyses the to print culture that anchored the experiences of bondwomen in a wider perspective and the past, present and the anticipated future of the struggles to attain complete freedom by the women slaves.

Stephanie M. H. examines the American south in its entirety but she focuses more on women slaves who worked in plantations. However, her description of the experiences of the women slaves does not rely on categories such as slaves who were fugitives, thieves and also she does not categorize the slaves into different religious backgrounds. As a result, her book betrays a great amount of brevity and it provides an admirable level of cohesion which rewards her approach to the subject of slavery. In a very diplomatic manner, the author minimizes the use of the word “slave”. As a matter of fact, in one of the book’s arguments, the term “slave” implies a static state of being in the sense that the freedom status of that individual remains constrained. She uses the term “bondperson” to bring her readers attention towards the legal status of the individual subjected to slavery. Furthermore, the author uses the term “enslaved person” to imply the ongoing historical process. Any readers who are skeptical on the importance of the selective and diplomatic use of terminologies should try substituting the term “enslavers” for “slave masters” or “slave owners” which are two terms that enlist violence and privilege from the point of view of the various categories of readers.

The book has five chapters which explore two main themes: the spatial history of American slavery and the limitations of women salves in terms of social scientific classifications which include accommodation, resistance, private or public, and political or nonpolitical aspects. The book draws the attention of the reader towards evidence for the restriction of women slave movement which is in the form of slave cabins and the fact that bodies wore states of oppression and resistance which is highly convincing. In stark contrast, readers could use much of the evidence provided in the book to reaffirm the categories she seeks to unseat, even though the book makes a strong case for the avoidance of doubt on the curtailing of the freedom of movement of women slaves.

The book’s first chapter takes a look at efforts by white slave owners to restrict and study the movement of the women slave and the ability of the slaves to thwart such attempts although at a great cost for women in particular. The mostly gender-based division of plantation laborers usually left women with very few chances to leave the plantations while the punishment for straying was often loaded with sexual abuse. In the second chapter, the author argues that truancy was a big part of the resistance of enslaved women and it was not merely an act of individuals but was a collective effort which in most cases had cumulative implications. The truant slave women relied highly on fellow slaves to provide them with food and water and in some cases to negotiate their return or simply not to betray them.  The truants, as well as their allies in the slave quarters, gave their slave owners false claims of hegemony which created an endemic labor problem in the American South.

The book’s chapter three describes how slaves held illicit parties and most of the enslaved women made great efforts in the making of fancy dance outfits for the parties. The pleasure, pride and self-expression of the slave women’s bodies was often their way of being rewarded for such efforts though in some circumstances the women became engaged in such activities as a form of political expression. The illicit parties kept slaves up form most of the nights which greatly reduced their productivity ultimately negating the involvement of slave women in units of production.

On reading the book, I learnt an important lesson that enslaved women were an important part in the slave rebellions that lead to abolition of slavery in America. The book speaks volumes of substantial and most often ingenious contributions to studies on slavery and to the role of women in the creation of the American South history. Furthermore, it provides an in-depth look at the role of women in the fight for freedom from slavery. It worth noting that the author successfully makes the case for the role of women in the growth of civil rights in not only the South but in all of America. I found the book very enlightening and captivating to read.