Description: "In histories of enslavement and in Black women's history, coercion looms large in any discussion of sex and sexuality. At a time when sexual violence against Black women was virtually unregulated--even normalized--a vast economy developed specifically to sell the sexual labor of Black women. In this vividly rendered book, Emily A. Owens wrestles with the question of why white men paid notoriously high prices to gain sexual access to the bodies of enslaved women to whom they already had legal and social access"--
Brief description: Emily A. Owens is associate professor of history at Brown University.
Review Quotes: "Consent in the Presence of Force joins robust scholarly conversations about the problem of the archive for understanding the experiences of enslaved Black women and girls. . . [it] situates itself as an essential point of departure for scholars committed to taking Black women at their word."--Journal of American History