Reviews
"Underscores the broad meaning of the continuing debates over sexual violence during and after slavery, the centrality of the African American family, and white hypocrisy."
--CHOICE
“Boldly and persuasively challenges received wisdom about the American narrative during the last two centuries.”
--Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 44, no. 2
“A necessary contribution to the story of slavery’s brutality, a story that 150 years later still must be told.”
--Civil War News
“Makes a powerful case not just to reexamine sexual exploitation under slavery and the power of memory as a historical tool but also to interrogate accepted historical narratives when less established oral traditions tell a different story… Smither’s bold book lays down its own gauntlet.”
--Journal of American History
“A must-read for those interested in African American history, the history of slavery, and the complex issues of gender and sexuality.”
--Journal of American Ethnic History
Using various sources and methodologies, this study is truly interdisciplinary in nature. Through traditional historical examination of sources, as well as literary and film criticism and linguistic and feminist theoretical analyses, Smithers demonstrates a masterful understanding of the secondary literature on slavery and post-slavery African American life. . . . An important and significant contribution to slavery studies.
--Journal of African American History
The depth of scholarship in this book is remarkable; integrating an impressive array of historiography and a judicious use of primary sources, such as the WPA Slave Narratives, Smithers effectively weaves the story of slave breeding into American and African American history from the nineteenth century to the present.
--The Historian
literature of American slavery that will be of considerable interest to students of the antebellum South as well as historians of women, gender, the family, and sexuality.
--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
Most Americans would agree that slavery existed, but they might have wildly different ideas about what slavery was like and what legacy it left. In Slave Breeding, Gregory D. Smithers exposes how these divergent views developed by tracing two historical threads: the vernacular history of a largely African American community and a professional history of primarily white, male historians.
--H-Net Reviews