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jcampbell's review
dark
informative
fast-paced
5.0
a phenomenal read! Totally sheds a light on an aspect on slavery that is so often missed. The resistance shown by enslaved women that this book sheds a light on is awe-inspiring and really emphasis the cruelty of the British empire.
elizabethchant's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
iris_ozurumba's review against another edition
dark
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
A short, accessible overview of the slave trade and slavery in the British Caribbean.
colin_cox's review against another edition
5.0
A Kick in the Belly is a short but indispensable study of the British Empire's crimes in the 17th, 18th, and 19th-century slave trade. However, what is far more consequential is how those women, specifically enslaved West Indian women in the Caribbean, fought and resisted the brutal conditions of slavery. As Dadzie attests, enslaved African women carry "many of her race's heaviest burdens" (170). Despite those many burdens, enslaved African women were also carriers of a collective consciousness, a sense of being in the world defined by pain, anguish, and suffering but also resistance, perseverance, and revolution. As Dadzie sees it, these women "played a vital role as they moulded and reshaped the cultural traditions that would sustain their people through centuries of tyranny, so that we, their distant kin and scattered descendants, would know our worth" (170). Passages like this remind me of the work of Audre Lorde, the black radical feminist, who, in her poem "Black Mother Woman," echoes Dadzie sentiment:
But I have peeled away your anger
down to the core of love
and look mother
I Am
a dark temple
where your true spirit rises
beautiful
and tough as chestnut
stanchion against your nightmares of weakness
and if my eyes conceal
a squadron of conflicting rebellions
I learned from you
to define myself
through your denials.
Both Dadzie and Lorde engage this question of what the black maternal body endures and produces, and for both Dadzie and Lorde, the black maternal body is the inheritor of "a wealth of inner resources" (171).
But I have peeled away your anger
down to the core of love
and look mother
I Am
a dark temple
where your true spirit rises
beautiful
and tough as chestnut
stanchion against your nightmares of weakness
and if my eyes conceal
a squadron of conflicting rebellions
I learned from you
to define myself
through your denials.
Both Dadzie and Lorde engage this question of what the black maternal body endures and produces, and for both Dadzie and Lorde, the black maternal body is the inheritor of "a wealth of inner resources" (171).
beffuh's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
3.75