Description: Originally published in 1991, Celia, a Slave illuminates the moral dilemmas that lie at the heart of a slaveholding society by telling the story of a young slave who was sexually exploited by her enslaver and ultimately executed for his murder. Melton A. McLaurin uses Celia's story to reveal the tensions that strained the fabric of antebellum southern society by focusing on the role of gender and the manner in which the legal system was used to justify slavery. An important addition to our understanding of the pre-Civil War era, Celia, a Slave is also an intensely compelling narrative of one woman pushed beyond the limits of her endurance by a system that denied her humanity at the most basic level.
Brief description: DAINA RAMEY BERRY is the Oliver H. Radkey Professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation and Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia.
Review Quotes: A remarkable account . . . McLaurin succeeds admirably in using Celia's story to raise larger issues about the meaning of American slavery. . . . That Celia and her shocking tale can be recovered at all is testimony to McLaurin's skill and assiduity.-- "New York Times Book Review"