Enslaved women preserved their sanity by adapting smuggled African cultural practices
Evidence
Whether responding to the horrendous conditions of plantation life, the sadistic vagaries of their captors or the ‘peculiar burdens of their sex’, their collective sanity relied on a highly subversive adaptation of the values and cultures they smuggled with them naked from different parts of Africa. … By sustaining or adapting remembered cultural practices – be it music, storytelling, preparing food, administering medicines, fixing hair, birthing and naming rites or rituals for burying their dead – they ensured that the lives of chattel slaves retained both meaning and purpose. — Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly- Women, Slavery and…, 47
Categorization
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly- Women, Slavery and…, 47
- XREF: connects to: Enslaved women transmitted cultural knowledge to ensure survival across generations — Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly- Women, Slavery and…, 331; Enslaved women preserved their humanity by clinging to traditional African practices — Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly- Women, Slavery and…, 380; European accounts falsely characterized African women as brutalized victims to justify slavery — Stella Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly- Women, Slavery and…, 397 (+11 more)
Broader Connections
- African cultural meanings survived slavery and grounded resistance
#corroborates(0.90) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 119 - Slave communal practices preserved Black identity and nourished the radical tradition
#corroborates(0.82)