Bibliograph

Once we were slaves, the extraordinary journey of a multiracial Jewish family, Laura Arnold Leibman

Type

Label

Once we were slaves, the extraordinary journey of a multiracial Jewish family, Laura Arnold Leibman

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-275) and index

resource.biographical

collective biography

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Once we were slaves

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Laura Arnold Leibman

Sub title

the extraordinary journey of a multiracial Jewish family

Summary

"An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line. Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses's ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress's assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor Christian slaves in Barbados. Tracing the siblings' extraordinary journey throughout the Atlantic World, Leibman examines artefacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York, to show how Sarah and Isaac were able to transform themselves and their lives, becoming free, wealthy, Jewish, and-at times-white. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten population of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived, and sheds new light on the fluidity of race-as well as on the role of religion in racial shift-in the first half of the nineteenth century"--, Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

Origins (Bridgetown, 1793-1798) -- From Slave to Free (Bridgetown, 1801) -- From Christian to Jew (Suriname, 1811-1812) -- The Tumultuous Island (Bridgetown, 1812-1817) -- Synagogue Seats (New York and Philadelphia, 1793-1818) -- The Material of Race (London, 1815-1817) -- Voices of Rebellion (Bridgetown, 1818-1824) -- A Woman Valor (New York, 1817-1819) -- This Liberal City (Philadelphia, 1818-1833) -- Feverish Love (New York, 1819-1830) -- When I am Gone (New York, Barbados, London, 1830-1847) -- Legacies (New York and Beyond, 1841-1860)

resource.variantTitle

Extraordinary journey of a multiracial Jewish family

Classification