Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana
(Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2019)
Available 2024 in French translation!
Awards & Distinctions
2020 • Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for the most outstanding book on the subject of slavery, resistance, and/or abolition
2020 • Winner of the American Historical Association James Rawley Book Prize in Atlantic History
2020 • Co-Winner of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide Diaspora Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Book Prize in Gender & Sexuality
2021 • Winner of the biennial Summersell Prize for the best book on the American South
2020 • Winner of the Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Prize for the best book in French Colonial History
2019 • Winner of the Kemper Williams Book Prize in Louisiana History
2020 • Co-Winner of the Summerlee Book Prize in Gulf Coast History
2020 • Honorable Mention for the Organization of American Historians Merle Curti Social History Book Award
2020 • Shortlisted for the Kenshur Book Prize in Eighteenth-Century Studies
2020 • Finalist for the ASWAD Sterling Stuckey Book Prize in African Diaspora Studies
Press Coverage: Sophie White wins the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize”
Select Reviews
… An evocative, mature, and artfully realized work of scholarship. … Voices of the Enslaved is perhaps most notable as an act of communion—a masterful effort to bend back the arrow of time, to meet the shifting gaze of the forgotten dead, and to know what we share and what we do not. That the book succeeds in doing so is a true credit to the author.
— Christopher Hodson, The William & Mary Quarterly
What is done brilliantly here, and it is the point of the book, is to demonstrate how the enslaved might articulate—in both words and deeds—their own positioning within these relationships and structures as they forged their lives where and how they could. This is asserted, assumed, or intuited in many histories of slavery. However, in eighteenth-century French Louisiana, as White shows, the enslaved gave evidence to prove it..
— Miles Ogborn, American Historical Review
Sophie White’s beautifully conceived and written Voices of the Enslaved reconceptualizes what we can consider autobiography and self-narrative, and it positions the testimony of enslaved people in French colonial Louisiana as an essential source for understanding slavery, the Atlantic world, French colonialism, and French legal history. … Her goal (…) is to flesh out their intimate and emotional landscapes, which she does with creativity and virtuosity. In sum, this vivid and engaging book builds bridges among fields and models innovative methodology.
— Jennifer Palmer, H-France
What People Are Saying
"This meticulously researched and lyrically written study offers a road map through the archives and a reconceptualization of the autobiography of the enslaved in the Atlantic world. Sophie White’s interpretive strategies wrest a vibrant and complex history of slavery from testimony, court proceedings, and the voices of the enslaved themselves. A genre-busting book."
- Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University
"In a marvelous act of recovery, translation, and storytelling, Sophie White resurrects the sounds and sights of enslavement on the edge of the French Empire, revealing a place we might have thought we would never see. An original and startling book."
- David W. Blight, Yale University
"With subtle analysis and empathetic storytelling, Voices of the Enslaved uncovers a stunning level of detail about how enslaved people experienced and resisted their bondage, how they managed profound loss and imagined possible futures. In their own words, and with vivid flashes of personality, the enslaved reveal their inner worlds like never before. A remarkable achievement."
- Brett Rushforth, University of Oregon
"White brings readers into the world slaves made for themselves, illuminating their attachments as well as their conflicts. With its remarkable anthropological sensitivity, her book is an insightful tribute to those who fought to make their voices heard."
-Cécile Vidal, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris