The Reapers Garden by Vincent Brown
What did people make of death in the world of Atlantic slavery? Brown asks this question about Jamaica. Popularly known as the grave of the Europeans, it was just as deadly for Africans and their descendants. Yet among the survivors, the dead remained both a vital presence and a social force.
Brown’s study ought to be read by scholars and students of Caribbean history as well as specialists of the black diaspora and the Atlantic World-- Philip Howard * The Americas *
Engrossing… Brown’s major concern is the cultural significance of death in a land marked by high mortality. Here, his account is compelling and highly original. He is especially interested in how both whites and blacks used death to control the strange environment they found themselves in. -- Trevor Burnard * Times Higher Education Supplement *
Vincent Brown makes the dead talk. With his deep learning and powerful historical imagination, he calls upon the departed to explain the living. The Reaper’s Garden stretches the historical canvas and forces readers to think afresh. It is a major contribution to the history of Atlantic slavery. -- Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
In this riveting and remarkable book, Vincent Brown carries us to the epicenter of the experience of slavery. He shows us how, in plantation Jamaica and along the Atlantic currents that shaped it, the worlds of the living and the dead were always tightly intertwined. -- Laurent Dubois, author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
A magisterial and brilliant account of the politics of death in the world of Atlantic slavery. We experience in vivid detail the role of the dead in the relationships, aspirations, and politics of the living. If the ghost of slavery haunts us in the present, as Brown reminds us, it is because our freedom dreams are tethered to those of the enslaved. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
The Reaper’s Garden is a truly luminous book that will establish Vincent Brown’s reputation as a brilliant interpreter of the African diaspora. -- Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History
An elegant and powerful study of the ways that all of Jamaica’s people—poor and rich, slave and free, black and white—lived in the constant shadow of death in England’s richest and most important colony. A profound exploration of the meanings of death and the dead for the living. -- James Sidbury, author of Becoming African in America
Engrossing… Brown’s major concern is the cultural significance of death in a land marked by high mortality. Here, his account is compelling and highly original. He is especially interested in how both whites and blacks used death to control the strange environment they found themselves in. -- Trevor Burnard * Times Higher Education Supplement *
Vincent Brown makes the dead talk. With his deep learning and powerful historical imagination, he calls upon the departed to explain the living. The Reaper’s Garden stretches the historical canvas and forces readers to think afresh. It is a major contribution to the history of Atlantic slavery. -- Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
In this riveting and remarkable book, Vincent Brown carries us to the epicenter of the experience of slavery. He shows us how, in plantation Jamaica and along the Atlantic currents that shaped it, the worlds of the living and the dead were always tightly intertwined. -- Laurent Dubois, author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
A magisterial and brilliant account of the politics of death in the world of Atlantic slavery. We experience in vivid detail the role of the dead in the relationships, aspirations, and politics of the living. If the ghost of slavery haunts us in the present, as Brown reminds us, it is because our freedom dreams are tethered to those of the enslaved. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
The Reaper’s Garden is a truly luminous book that will establish Vincent Brown’s reputation as a brilliant interpreter of the African diaspora. -- Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History
An elegant and powerful study of the ways that all of Jamaica’s people—poor and rich, slave and free, black and white—lived in the constant shadow of death in England’s richest and most important colony. A profound exploration of the meanings of death and the dead for the living. -- James Sidbury, author of Becoming African in America
Vincent Brown is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of The Reaper’s Garden, winner of the James A. Rawley Prize, the Louis Gottschalk Prize, and the Merle Curti Award, and of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War, winner of the Anisfield–Wolf Book Award, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Elsa Goveia Book Prize, the James A. Rawley Prize, and the Harriet Tubman Prize. His documentary Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness, broadcast nationally on PBS, won the John E. O’Connor Film Award and was chosen as Best Documentary at the Hollywood Black Film Festival.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780674057128 |
| ISBN 10 | 0674057120 |
| Title | The Reapers Garden |
| Author | Vincent Brown |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
| Year published | 2010-09-30 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Prizes | Winner of James A. Rawley Prize 2009, Winner of Merle Curti Award 2009, Winner of American Society for 18th-Century Studies Louis Gotschalk Prize 2009, Joint winner of Merle Curti Award 2009, Nominated for OAH Liberty Legacy Foundation Award 2009, Nominated for OAH Frederick Jackson Turner Award 2009, Nominated for Lawrence W. Levine Award 2009, Nominated for James Willard Hurst Prize 2008, Nominated for Mark Lynton History Prize 2009, Nominated for Francis Parkman Prize 2009 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |