The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial MexicoPosted in Books, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Mexico, Monographs, Women on 2022-04-21 17:01Z by Steven |
The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico
Yale University Press
2022-04-12
296 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
9 b/w illustrations
Hardcover ISBN: 9780300258066
Danielle Terrazas Williams, Lecturer in the School of History
University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
A restoration of the agency and influence of free African-descended women in colonial Mexico through their traces in archives
The Capital of Free Women examines how African-descended women strove for dignity in seventeenth-century Mexico. Free women in central Veracruz, sometimes just one generation removed from slavery, purchased land, ran businesses, managed intergenerational wealth, and owned slaves of African descent. Drawing from archives in Mexico, Spain, and Italy, Danielle Terrazas Williams explores the lives of African-descended women across the economic spectrum, evaluates their elite sensibilities, and challenges notions of race and class in the colonial period.