The power to die
Subtitle: slavery and suicide in British North America
By: Terri L. Snyder
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780226280561
Subjects: Suicidal behavior; Suicide; Slavery; Slaves; History
Description: Acts of suicide by enslaved people carried significant cultural, legal, and political implications in the emerging slave societies of British America and, later, the United States. This study features a wide range of evidence from ship logs and surgeon's journals, legal and legislative records, newspapers, periodicals, novels, and plays, abolitionist print and slave narratives in order to consider the intimate circumstances, cultural meanings, and political consequences of enslaved peoples' acts of self-destruction in the context of early American slavery.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-231) and index.
Table of contents: title: Anna's Leap; title: The Problem of Suicide in North American Slavery; title: Suicide and the Transatlantic Slave Trade; title: Suicide and Seasoning in British American Plantations; title: Slave Suicide in the Context of Colonial North America; title: The Power to Die or the Power of the State? The Legalities of Suicide in Slavery; title: The Paradoxes of Suicide and Slavery in Print; title: The Meaning of Suicide in Antislavery Politics; title: Suicide, Slavery, and Memory in American Culture; title: Studying Slave Suicide: An Essay on Sources.