Illicit sexual relationships in the 18th century reveal how ordinary people understood race and racial difference in North Carolina's growing slave society. Suspect Relations draws on vivid court-room testimony and travel literature to show how non-elite women and men--Native Americans, African Americans, and Euro-Americans--shaped developing meanings of race. Disorderly women and religious dissenters, rebellious slaves and indentured servants, unwed mothers and boastful bachelors speak in these pages. Their responses to sexual transgressions, including cross-cultural sex, 'illegitimate' families, sexual slander, and sexualized violence, served to contest but also to reinscribe the developing social order based on race. Moving beyond elite understandings of racial difference, this book shows how race came to seem real in a wide array of relationships that were as political as they were personal.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Because [Fischer] skillfully weaves together questions of class, race, gender, sexuality, and the social order, her book should be read by scholars of all related fields. -- The Journal of American History, March 2003
Exploring a wealth of fascinating and at times heartbreaking stories,...Fischer investigates public responses to the intimate actions of unruly women... -- The American Historical Review, December 2002
Lively as well as erudite, Suspect Relations provides a telling portrait which is both fully examined and sharply rendered. -- Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2002
[Fischer's] historical creativity, as well as the book's contributions to the study of race and sexuality...will make it a good volume for graduate classes and advanced undergraduates. -- Reviews in American History, September 2003
[Fischer] remains imaginative and bold. Her work will intrigue colonial historians and inspire others to follow her provocative lead. -- South Carolina Historical Review, October 2003 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Exploring a wealth of fascinating and at times heartbreaking stories,...Fischer investigates public responses to the intimate actions of unruly women... -- The American Historical Review, December 2002
Lively as well as erudite, Suspect Relations provides a telling portrait which is both fully examined and sharply rendered. -- Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2002
[Fischer's] historical creativity, as well as the book's contributions to the study of race and sexuality...will make it a good volume for graduate classes and advanced undergraduates. -- Reviews in American History, September 2003
[Fischer] remains imaginative and bold. Her work will intrigue colonial historians and inspire others to follow her provocative lead. -- South Carolina Historical Review, October 2003 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From the Back Cover
"Suspect Relations is an important contribution to the contemporary discussion of the origins of race as a category, an assumed 'physical fact,' in the American colonies." Karen Ordahl Kupperman
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An intriguing, and quite compelling, look at formulation of race relations in colonial North Carolina,
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This review is from: Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Paperback)
Kirstin Fischer, in her book Suspect Relations, has offered the reader an intriguing portrait of racial relations in colonial North Carolina based on sex.
Many readers will treat the concept of sex and race with some suspicion; how can these two items be related unless you're talking (much like Foucault) about power? Fischer certainly does talk about power relationships, but she focuses on gender and social responses to sexual behaviors to construct her argument about creating the definition of "race". Fischer has mined lower court records to garner an understanding about societal responses in this era to sexual behaviors, including deviance. She breaks this down into 5 well crafted chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of racial/gender relations. Her chapters cover the gamut, from rebellious women to slaveowners engaging in sexual relations with their slaves to craft her argument. In the end, she claims that race is a biological construct defined by sexual behaviors. It is an interesting argument, and usually supported well by her evidence. The one problem I had with this book is that we have no idea how widespread some of the cases she cites are. The evidence she provides is for a few individual scenarios, but she does not really put this into context of the entire population in most cases. Despite this drawback, the argument is compelling and the book is well worth reading for anyone that has an interest in 18th century America.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a bit repetitive but good,
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This review is from: Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Paperback)
Read this for a 400 level history class. I gave it 4 stars, not b/c I loved reading it, after all I don't really care about gender adn sexual history very much, but it was well researched and well written. The author was a bit repetitive and it could have been a number of pages shorter as a result, but the information that is inhere is good and documneted. While the author tries to draw clear conclusions, she is only looking at it from one point of view adn there is plenty of debate to be had on the importance of these histories.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good,
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This review is from: Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Paperback)
It's a great book, both historically and story. It was very entertaining and thought-provoking. Great condition w/only a few pages of highlighting.
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
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North Carolina, Native American, African Americans, South Carolina, Dorothy Steel, John Lawson, Society of Friends, William Byrd, General Court, Hannah Luton, Tuscarora War, Pasquotank County, Trading Girls, Albemarle County, Albemarle Sound, Bob Boe, European Americans, New England, William Bartram, James Adair, Von Graffenried, Bertie County, Chowan County, Elinor Moline, Mary Cotton New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
North Carolina, Native American, African Americans, South Carolina, Dorothy Steel, John Lawson, Society of Friends, William Byrd, General Court, Hannah Luton, Tuscarora War, Pasquotank County, Trading Girls, Albemarle County, Albemarle Sound, Bob Boe, European Americans, New England, William Bartram, James Adair, Von Graffenried, Bertie County, Chowan County, Elinor Moline, Mary Cotton New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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17
books
cite this book:
See all 17 books citing this book
- South Carolina (Gousha Fastmap) by Don Wood on 5 pages
- Colonial Chesapeake Society (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) by Lois Green Carr in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) by Ronald (editor); Sobel, Mechal (editor) Hoffman in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England by Ann Marie Plane in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist) by Kathleen M. Brown in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 100 books this book cites
- Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Early American Studies) by Jennifer L. Morgan on 4 pages
- Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America by Thomas Foster in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Claiming the Pen: Women And Intellectual Life in the Early American South by Catherine Kerrison in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- New Studies in the History of American Slavery by Edward E. Baptist in Front Matter, and page 162
- Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson's America by Cynthia A. Kierner in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 17 books citing this book
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