BLACK WOMEN WRITER’S BOOK REVIEW
Women of The Caribbean — Their Resistance To The White Man’s Chains
Setting the history books straight
I wasn’t looking for this book, but it found me. In fact, when I came across it, I had just completed the checkout for a different book — which one I can’t quite remember. That said, what I can guarantee is it was probably a black woman focused read. A Kick in The Belly — Women, Slavery, and Resistance by Stella Dadzie is a mind blowing read that sets the record straight on Black women, their history, and their role in resistance to slavery, as well as how our foremothers and sisters “got through the shit.”
It’s a slim and concise read at under 200 pages, not including the afterward or extensive bibliography. In just seven detailed but to the point chapters, I learned more about Black women than I Imagined I would.
The focus of Dadzie’s writing and extensive research is not about chattel slavery in an American south context, it’s focused on the islands and the voyage Black women took from Africa to the Caribbean. Which for me was personally welcome being of Caribbean descent, that said the history of chattel slavery and Black women across the Americas is no less important, key, or interesting — it’s essential. For anyone who has not yet become…
