Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire
Biographer Stuart found George Ashby, her maternal grandfather eight times removed, at the farthest reaches of her family tree, dating back to 1620. He was among thousands who embarked on an immigrant’s journey from the Old World, with its severe social and economic strictures, to the New World, with its seemingly unbounded opportunities. Ashby landed in Barbados and began a sugar plantation that has continued to the present, a heritage that extended through miscegenation to Stuart’s black progenitors. Stuart vividly portrays the realities of race, class, and sex, as played out in the pursuit of riches afforded by the “white gold” of sugar plantations. In this family history, rich in detail, Stuart tells the story of immigration, the harsh realities of Caribbean slavery and sugar production, and the ambitions of black West Indians that have driven their own immigrant journeys to the U.S. and Europe. Stuart, acclaimed author of The Rose of Martinique (2004), offers a fascinating look at her own family, the embodiment of the global history of European immigration, the Atlantic slave trade, and the African diaspora. --Vanessa Bush