A comparative approach to the African cultural legacy of the Black family experiences in slave-based Atlantic world societies.

• In Event: Of kinship, family, and oceans

Description for Program

This presentation will discuss a comparative approach taken in this study to the experiences of black family life in slave-based Brazil and other American slave-based societies, discussing the extent to which they were conceived from African cultural matrixes and analyzing their differences and similarities.

I began my investigations on the Black family in Bahian-Brazil slave-based society by using any and all documentary evidence regarding the captive population’s ability to create and maintain ties of affection, association, and blood. I attempted to discover possibilities of concrete and everyday family and affective lives developed by black men, women, and children, whether enslaved, freed, or free.

Also, I am linking the above-mentioned approach to a perspective of comparative analysis between Afro-Brazilian and Afro-American experiences in this new area of study, commencing with research on documents and literature on the subject in Brazil and the US. I am seeking to increase reflections on parental strategies by Africans and their descendants, both in Brazil and the US. I am consulting sources that make it possible to “hear” the subjects’ voices in history to implement this approach, especially police interrogations, statements contained in freedom deeds, wills, and other documents written by enslaved, freed, and free blacks. Historical sources, such as criminal proceedings and freedom deeds, are generally “dense” qualitative documentation containing detailed information that allows for the accompaniment of accounts/stories and which may reveal evidence of family relationships among Africans and their descendants, such as how they brought up their children and worshipped their gods and what they did in their leisure and recreational periods, among many other aspects.

Author

• Isabel Cristina Ferreira dos Reis, Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia