Stella Dadzie

A Kick in the Belly: How enslaved Black Women used their reproductive agency to fight back

Overview: Whether responding to the horrendous conditions of plantation life, the sadistic whims of their captors, or the 'peculiar burdens of their sex', the collective sanity of enslaved West Indian wonen relied on a highly subversive adaptation of the values and cultures they smuggled with them across the Atlantic.  With reference to her book A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance (Verso, 2020), feminist historian Stella Dadzie will explore how the entire project of Slavery rested on the wombs of black women, and how they used their reproductive agency to fight back..

​

Content and keywords: slavery, enslaved women, West Indies, reproduction, emancipation

Stella Dadzie is a founder member of OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent) and award winning author of The Heart of the Race: Black Women's lives in Britain. See here for Stella's full biopic.  

​

​