The Everyday Resistance of Enslaved Women
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Studying history is like detective work especially when the rebellion of Black women has been left out of the story.
In her new book, A Kick in the Belly
, Afrocentric British historian Stella Dadzie describes how her research into slavery-era documents reveals the lives of enslaved Black women in
the Caribbean colonies and the American South. The phrase “kicked in the belly” summarizes the abuse enslaved women endured but they also resisted, rebelled, and kicked back. “These women’s response,” she writes, “can be seen as a metaphorical kick in the belly for those who tried and failed to dehumanize them.”