What Sorrows Labour in My Parent's Breast?: A History of the Enslaved Black Family
Brenda E. Stevenson
Rowman & Littlefield
The legacy of the slave family haunts the status of black Americans in modern U.S. society. Stereotypes that first entered the popular imagination in the form of plantation lore have continued to distort the African American social identity.
In What Sorrows Labour in My Parents' Breast?, Brenda Stevenson provides a long overdue concise history to help the reader understand this vitally important African American institution as it evolved and survived under the extreme opposition that the institution of slavery imposed. The themes of this work center on the multifaceted reality of loss, recovery, resilience and resistance embedded in the desire of African/African descended people to experience family life despite their enslavement.