Graham Sandra Lauderdale
Retired, University of Texas at Austin.
Slavery Abol. 2011;32(1):1-26. doi: 10.1080/0144039x.2011.538196.
Through the experiences of two West Africans shipped to Bahia as slaves, probably in the 1840s, then sold south to Rio de Janeiro where they met, became lovers, bought their freedom, married, and divorced, I comment on an ongoing debate over the refashioning or transfer of African ethnic identities in American slave societies. The sources in this Brazilian case suggest that previous identities were not suddenly erased, but rather, new layers of understanding and ways of responding were added. Whatever the dynamic of cultural formation, it was memory that crucially bridged the distance between the past they carried with them and the present into which they were thrust; and so it becomes illuminating to reconstruct the plausibly remembered African pasts on which this couple drew to make sense of an unfamiliar Brazilian present.
通过两位西非人的经历，他们大概在19世纪40年代作为奴隶被运往巴伊亚，然后被卖到南方的里约热内卢，在那里他们相遇、相爱、买下自由、结婚，最后离婚。我对美国奴隶社会中关于非洲族裔身份重塑或转移的持续争论发表评论。这个巴西案例中的资料表明，先前的身份并非突然被抹去，而是增添了新的理解层面和应对方式。无论文化形成的动态如何，至关重要的是记忆弥合了他们所携带的过去与被推入的现在之间的距离；因此，重构这对夫妇为理解陌生的巴西现状而汲取的可能被记住的非洲过去变得具有启发性。
