Description: Teresa Benguela and Felipa Crioula Were Pregnant examines the experiences of motherhood for enslaved African women and their descendants who navigated the realities of reproduction in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro.
Brief description: LORENA FÉRES DA SILVA TELLES is a historian and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at the University of Pittsburgh and in the History Department at the State University of Campinas. Her research for this book won the Award for Best Dissertation in Social Sciences from the Latin American Studies Association.
Review Quotes: Lorena Féres da Silva Telles's study of pregnancy and infant care in the last years of slavery in Rio de Janeiro will be welcomed by everyone interested in the history of slavery across the Atlantic world. With sensitivity to the lives of individual enslaved women and careful attention to the thought and practice of medical professionals, Telles shows the importance of pregnancy and maternity to the crisis in slavery in Brazil.--Diana Paton "author of No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in Jamaican State Formation, 1780-1870"