Book talk with Lorena Feres da Silva Telles
Teresa Benguela and Felipa Crioula Were Pregnant: Motherhood and Slavery in 19th Century Rio de Janeiro.
Book talk by scholar Lorena Feres da Silva Telles (Federal University of São Paulo) on her book: Teresa Benguela and Felipa Crioula Were Pregnant: Motherhood and Slavery in 19th Century Rio de Janeiro. This book examines the experiences of motherhood for enslaved African women and their descendants who navigated the realities of reproduction in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. It draws on an array of historical sources to reveal the experiences of sexual autonomy, sexual violence, pregnancy, labor, breastfeeding, and the care of enslaved and freed babies in Rio de Janeiro between 1830 and 1888. The book also details the sorrows and hopes of these enslaved women and illuminates their escapes, strategies of resistance and survival, and the social networks they built to cope with the harsh realities and limitations that slavery imposed on motherhood in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro.