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Book

The souls of womenfolk : the religious cultures of enslaved women in the Lower South

Call Number

  • 306.362 W455 (CEN)

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Publication Information

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2021]

Physical Description

xi, 307 pages ; 24 cm

Summary

"In The souls of womenfolk, Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh argues that woman-gendered cosmologies and experiences from the Upper Guinea Coast played a distinct role in shaping the religious consciousness and practices of enslaved communities in the Lower South, and that this process took place concurrently as enslaved peoples in the U.S. South interpreted their new contexts through the cosmological frameworks of their foreparents, while acquiring, innovating, and revising contemporaneous practices"--

Contents

  • Introduction: of the faith of the mothers
  • Georgia genesis: the birth of the enslaved female soul
  • Womb remembrances: the moral dimensions of enslaved motherhood
  • Sex, body, and soul: sexual ethics and social values among the enslaved
  • The birth and death of souls: enslaved women and ritual
  • Spirit bodies and feminine souls: women, power, and the sacred imagination
  • When souls gather: women and gendered performance in religious spaces
  • Conclusion: gendering the "religion of the slave."

Subjects