{"id":30079,"date":"2013-04-03T02:33:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T02:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=30079"},"modified":"2013-04-03T02:33:52","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T02:33:52","slug":"masters-and-slaves-%e2%80%98sugar-in-the-blood%e2%80%99-by-andrea-stuart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=30079","title":{"rendered":"Masters and Slaves: \u2018Sugar in the Blood,\u2019 by Andrea Stuart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Masters and Slaves: \u2018Sugar in the Blood,\u2019 by Andrea Stuart<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2013-03-29<\/p>\n

Amy Wilentz<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sugar in the Blood: A Family\u2019s Story of Slavery and Empire<\/a><\/em> By Andrea Stuart<\/a>, Illustrated. 353 pp. Alfred A. Knopf.<\/p>\n

On a trip to Paris, I recently had the same shocked realization that Andrea Stuart<\/a> describes in her astounding new book, \u201cSugar in the Blood<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slaves built this<\/em>, I thought as I wandered from one grand 18th-century monument to the next. How rarely we acknowledge that Europe\u2019s great cities were built on profits from the labor and blood of slaves cutting sugarcane half a world away.<\/p>\n

Stuart, a London-based author of Barbadian ancestry, writes of contemporary England: \u201cSugar surrounds me here.\u201d The majestic Harewood House in Leeds was built with money from Caribbean sugar plantations, she points out, as was the Codrington Library of All Souls College in Oxford and Bristol\u2019s mansions. The slaves of the West Indies built this wealth while unaware of its existence, or of their own connection to it. Without them, the vast empire that gave the world Victoria and Dickens might never have existed.<\/p>\n

In this multigenerational, minutely researched history, Stuart teases out these connections. She sets out to understand her family\u2019s genealogy, hoping to explain the mysteries that often surround Caribbean family histories and to elucidate more important cultural and historic themes and events: the psychological after\u00adeffects of slavery and the long relationship between sugar \u2014 \u201cwhite gold\u201d \u2014 and forced labor…<\/p>\n

…There is not a single boring page in this book, which \u2014 as a longtime reader of nonfiction and skipper of boring pages \u2014 I can attest is an achievement in itself. In every chapter of \u201cSugar in the Blood,\u201d history, fact, analysis and personal reflection combine to move the narrative forward, both the grand story of slavery and sugar and the more mundane but always fascinating story of family and business. And beneath every banal moment of cooking or cleaning, of selling or buying, of dressing or undressing, the threat of uprising and rebellion beats loudly, as it must have done on the plantation…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Masters and Slaves: \u2018Sugar in the Blood,\u2019 by Andrea Stuart The New York Times 2013-03-29 Amy Wilentz Sugar in the Blood: A Family\u2019s Story of Slavery and Empire By Andrea Stuart, Illustrated. 353 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. On a trip to Paris, I recently had the same shocked realization that Andrea Stuart describes in her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,21,459,8,6940],"tags":[14267,13472,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-30079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","tag-amy-wilentz","tag-andrea-stuart","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}