Description: Cooper draws on extensive trial records that offer, in Angélique's own words, a detailed portrait of her life and a sense of what slavery was like in Canada at the time. Predating other first-person accounts by more than forty years, these records constitute what is arguably the oldest slave narrative in the New World.
Brief description: AFUA COOPER is a leading scholar of the African diaspora in Canada. Her many publications include the coauthored collection We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up, which won the Joseph Brant History Prize. She has also curated three exhibits on black Canadian history. Cooper taught history and Canadian studies at the University of Toronto and Caribbean studies at Ryerson University. She is a celebrated dub poet, whose work is available in print and audio. Essence has listed Cooper as one of the twenty-five notable international women who have "put themselves on the line to change the world."
Review Quotes:
Cooper connects Angélique's fate with the wide world of Atlantic, American, and Canadian slavery, and with the intimate world of the household where Angélique worked. An enthralling and important tale.
--Natalie Zemon Davis "author of The Return of Martin Guerre"