Power to Die

图书信息

作者	Snyder, Terri L.
出版社	University of Chicago Press
ISBN	9780226280738
出版时间	2015-08-28
字数	56.4万
分类	University of Chicago Press,进口书,外文原版书,文学,自传,回忆录

读书简介

The history of slavery in early America is a history of suicide. On ships crossing the Atlantic, enslaved men and women refused to eat or leaped into the ocean. They strangled or hanged themselves. They tore open their own throats. In America, they jumped into rivers or out of windows, or even ran into burning buildings. Faced with the reality of enslavement, countless Africans chose death instead.In The Power to Die, Terri L. Snyder excavates the history of slave suicide, returning it to its central place in early American history. How did people-traders, plantation owners, and, most importantly, enslaved men and women themselves-view and understand these deaths, and how did they affect understandings of the institution of slavery then and nowSnyder draws on ships' logs, surgeons' journals, judicial and legislative records, newspaper accounts, abolitionist propaganda and slave narratives, and many other sources to build a grim picture of slavery's toll and detail the ways in which suicide exposed the contradictions of slavery, serving as a powerful indictment that resonated throughout the Anglo-Atlantic world and continues to speak to historians today.

目录

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

PROLOGUE / Anna’s Leap

INTRODUCTION / The Problem of Suicide in North American Slavery

ONE / Suicide and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

TWO / Suicide and Seasoning in British American Plantations

THREE / Slave Suicide in the Context of Colonial North America

FOUR / The Power to Die or the Power of the State? The Legalities of Suicide in Slavery

FIVE / The Paradoxes of Suicide and Slavery in Print

SIX / The Meaning of Suicide in Antislavery Politics

EPILOGUE / Suicide, Slavery, and Memory in American Culture

Studying Slave Suicide: An Essay on Sources

Abbreviations

Notes

Select Bibliography of Primary Sources

Index