Description
Book SynopsisExquisite Slavesexamines how slaves in Lima, Peru used elegant clothing to express attitudes about gender and status. Drawing on a diverse range of sources and analyses, Walker demonstrates that in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Lima clothing signified both the reach and limits of slaveholders' power and racial domination.
Trade Review'Exquisite Slaves represents a unique and distinctive contribution to the history of racial formation in Spanish America which will command the attention of the scholarly community. This book considerably deepens our understanding of colonial racial formation.' Herman Bennett, City University of New York
'Walker's invigorating analysis of enslaved and freed cultural agency is a welcome contribution to the history of slavery. Her unique focus on manners of dress and gendered public presentation underlines how slavery was rooted not just in daily events, but in intimate senses of self and others. Informed by an Atlantic vision, Walker's close reading of imagery and text charts a new path for how to write a history of the African Diaspora in Latin America.' Rachel Sarah O'Toole, University of California, Irvine
'… Walker's book provides a novel account on the contradictory dressing practices of people of colour in colonial Lima as a tool that both submitted them to the colonial regime and allowed them to challenge the norms … the book is an important approximation for the advancement of fashion studies and dress history in Latin America.' Laura Beltran-Rubio, The Journal of Dress History
'Students and experts interested in the African diaspora, material culture, racial identity, the formation of Blackness, and gender will surely benefit from this book.' Erika Denise Edwards, Hispanic American Historical Review
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Slavery and the aesthetic of mastery; 2. Legal status, gender, and self-fashioning; 3. Black bodies and boundary trouble; 4. Painting, print culture, and colonial ideation; 5. Ladies, gentlemen, slaves, and citizens; Epilogue.
