Laboring Women Jennifer L. Morgan\'s

Laboring Women

Jennifer L. Morgan's book Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery discusses what happened when black women were brought to the New World, leaving their homes in Africa and being forced into slavery. Not only were the women judged by just how hard they could work, but their self-worth also depended upon if they could have children or not. The word "labor" then signifies both the labor the women could do in terms of work and labor in terms of giving birth. The two labors become tangled together.

Morgan's book is an eye-opener because not only does it reaffirm just how early America needed and exploited black women, but she goes a step further and wants history to affirm that slavery not only exploited these women but it also was the fact that these women were used for reproduction that changes the whole idea about what slavery actually was for these women and how it perpetuated slavery in America. It is appalling to think about how these women were being exploited and enslaved because of the color of their skin, yet they were also being exploited and made slaves of their own bodies by having to give birth to white men's babies (the babies of which then became the property of the white men) and thus the children would go on to become slaves, adding to the number of enslaved individuals in America. What Morgan does, perhaps more than anything in this book, is try to convince the reader that female slaves had a much different type of slave experience than male slaves did -- and she does succeed at doing this. While Morgan is able to show the disparities between female and male slaves' experiences in early modern America and she contends that her work is completely original, it is better said that Morgan furthers the idea about this topic because even for people who are non-scholars concerning slavery, it is not new or even original to believe that the male and female slave experience was different. Women have long been exploited with their bodies through human history. They have been used to give children to more powerful men throughout time. This is not to take away from the black female slave experience in early America because it is undeniable that they were exploited in a way that male slaves were not and this has shaped the legacy of the black female experience in America. What Morgan does do is show how actual physical labor (production) and reproduction both had a major hand in creating what America became.

This book is difficult to read because of the sheer awfulness of what black female slaves had to endure; however, Morgan handles the topic with grace. It would be difficult as a women to try and understand exactly what these women had to live through (in the name of commerce and production), but Morgan is sensitive while making her points, which has to be admired.

Of particular interest in this book is the whole talk of "creolization" -- a term not often heard. Essentially, Morgan discusses creolization and how this event is directly associated with reproduction. The entire Creole history, she claims, required black women's giving birth to these children. This is an area of history that perhaps isn't written about or talked about enough.

Perhaps one of the most original and interesting parts of Morgan's book is that she begins with the women in Africa and she follows them through the Middle Passage and then into America and thus the reader is able to get a real sense of the journal and the cultural differences that the women endured. Often in history books we fail to consider exactly where slaves came from, their journey and what they endured on the journey. It is easy to suddenly imagine these slaves plunked down somewhere without considering where they came from. Morgan does something different in this book by following them from their homes and it offers so much insight for the reader and really adds to the whole impact and experience of her book in a profound way.