This presentation offers an intimate portrait of the life of an enslaved woman, known as Abba, who appears multiple times in the diary of a slaveholder in eighteenth-century Jamaica. Abba’s life, like many others chronicled in the diary, is incompletely established in the literature, a pathetic figure overcome by violence, domination, and a demanding labor regime. Shifting analytic gaze and narrative voice to the enslaved, this discussion uncovers enslaved women’s affective creativity and configuration of a life aligned with their maternal and communal values.

Sasha Turner is associate professor of history at The Johns Hopkins University and is the author of Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing and Slavery in Jamaica. Professor Turner has received many awards for her research, including from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Southern Association of Women Historians, African American Intellectual History Society, Association of Black Women Historians, and North American Conference on British Studies. She is working on a new project on slavery and emotions.

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.