| Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery Contributor(s): Vlach, John Michael (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0807844128 ISBN-13: 9780807844120 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $47.50 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 1993 Annotation: Exploring the structures and spaces used by slaves on antebellum plantations, Vlach shows how slaves subtly appropriated this landscape as their own. These newly claimed spaces fostered a feeling of community that served as a seedbed for further resistance and for the invention and maintenance of a distinctive African American culture. 206 illustrations. A New York Times Notable Book. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - General - Architecture | History - General |
| Dewey: 975.004 |
| LCCN: 92034579 |
| Lexile Measure: 1550 |
| Series: Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies |
| Physical Information: 0.82" H x 8.54" W x 11.12" (1.75 lbs) 278 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Behind the "Big Houses" of the antebellum South existed a different world, socially and architecturally, where slaves lived and worked. John Michael Vlach explores the structures and spaces that formed the slaves' environment. Through photographs and the words of former slaves, he portrays the plantation landscape from the slaves' own point of view. The plantation landscape was chiefly the creation of slaveholders, but Vlach argues convincingly that slaves imbued this landscape with their own meanings. Their subtle acts of appropriation constituted one of the more effective strategies of slave resistance and one that provided a locus for the formation of a distinctive African American culture in the South. Vlach has chosen more than 200 photographs and drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey--an archive that has been mined many times for its images of the planters' residences but rarely for those of slave dwellings. In a dramatic photographic tour, Vlach leads readers through kitchens, smokehouses, dairies, barns and stables, and overseers' houses, finally reaching the slave quarters. To evoke a firsthand sense of what it was like to live and work in these spaces, he includes excerpts from the moving testimonies of former slaves drawn from the Federal Writers' Project collections. |
Contributor Bio(s): Vlach, John Michael: - John Michael Vlach is professor of American studies and anthropology and director of the folklife program at The George Washington University. His books include The Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings and The Afro-American Tradition in the Decorative Arts. |