Our guest on today’s episode is Tracey Rose Peyton, author of Night Wherever We Go. The novel takes place on a small Texas farm in 1852. Unlike the vast, prosperous plantations like Monticello, this farm is not doing well. The owners dream up the idea of forcing enslaved women to have more children, to increase their labor pool. But the six women have different plans, and they work together to protect themselves. It's a beautiful, lyrical book.
Author Tracey Rose Peyton generously provided the names of the books she used for research. They helped her build her very believable setting and create her enslaved characters and those around them. Here is her list.
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Foundational sources for the novel:
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, Paula J. Giddings
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and The Meaning of Liberty, Dorothy Roberts
Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, Stephanie M.H. Camp
History of US founders and their support of slavery. (Both are written for a general audience and Peyton says the one on Washington is particularly good.):
An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, Henry Wiencek
Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, Henry Wiencek
For more information on Texas and how it was shaped by slavery:
Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850, Andrew J. Torget
For those interested in power dynamics within the plantation household:
Out of the House of the Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household, Thavolia Glymph
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, Stephanie Jones-Rogers
Buy Night Wherever We Go. (It's in paperback as of Jan. 30.)
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