Reviews for Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries (New Directions in Latino American Cultures Series)

The average rating for Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries (New Directions in Latino American Cultures Series) based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-01-23 00:00:00 Michael Astle Yes, not something I would usually read, but I found some of it interesting. I was going to take a course, of which this book is required reading. Even though I dropped the course, I still found myself going back to the book. It is very specialized, not something the general reader would like. And, the author does occasionally over-reach in his interpretation of gender politics, which is in the current academic trend in history interpretation. The author is not separating the politics of history interpretation from the subject sufficiently. He is playing to the main audience of this book, an largely academic, feminist centered, professional historian. His charge of rape against those who spoke restricted woman's roles in mid-19th century society are too numerous. So, why do I keep going back to the book. Pierson's research is extensive, and he does write fairly well. His attempt to intertwine gender ideology and politics on the eve of the Civil War is interesting. He does make some interesting assertions on the changing role of women in society in the wake of the industrial revolution, the emerging middle, consumer class, and the impact on family structure and woman's role in the fight for woman's suffrage and abolition. I will finish this one more chapter and then put it away. I have not read the entire book and don't plan to.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-30 00:00:00 Tiffany Creech Free Hearts and Free Homes is an interesting, engaging work about a topic that is so often overshadowed in the average history classroom concerning the antebellum period. Pierson [full disclosure: he was my professor] manages to deftly weave together gender and antislavery politics in a fashion that makes it quite clear that they were inextricably linked, a fact that many contemporaries attempted to outright ignore in that period, which consequently has shaped our understanding of that particular period until the emergence of the New Social History movement. Pierson's tales of Senator Thomas H. Benton's spitfire daughter Jessie Benton Fremont and her dashing husband the presidential candidate John C. Fremont were particularly memorable and riveting.