User:Jengod/Writing

This essay mostly applies to writing about the formerly enslaved of the colonial Americas, including the Caribbean, and the enslaved of the countries that later were established on those continents, e.g., the United States.

• Be forewarned, writing about slavery is writing about an atrocity. It will wear you out. Practice self-care to avoid burnout. If you're a conscientious person with a conscience, keeping yourself in the game long-term is the best thing you do to contribute, so pace yourself. You're not going to single-handedly redeem the world tonight, so get some sleep. We fight again tomorrow.
• This is a general rule for life and writing but be specific because generalities benefit the oppressor.
  • General: "a South Carolina plantation"
  • Specific: "the John Joyner Smith Plantation in Port Royal between Parris Island and Beaufort, South Carolina"
  • More specific: "at what had been the plantation of John Joyner Smith, today United States Naval Hospital Beaufort, between Parris Island and Beaufort, South Carolina"
  • Most specific: "taken during the Port Royal Experiment at what had been the plantation of John Joyner Smith, today United States Naval Hospital Beaufort, located between Parris Island and Beaufort, South Carolina, 1862"
• Whenever possible, people should not be labeled as "Name (slave)." No man, woman or child anywhere in earth at any time in history is a slave, they have been enslaved.
  • Gordon (slave) > Gordon (escaped slave)
  • Hannah Jackson (slave) > Hannah Jackson
  • Dilsia (slave) > Dilsia
• Conversely, pushing the fact of someone's enslavement to the remote edges of their biography too readily absolves a lot of responsible consenting adults who chose to be involved in this level of exploitation. Slavery wasn't the only thing, but it's not nothing either.
• If all you have is a date, go look up the calendar for that month in history. Was it a Tuesday or a Sunday?
• Slavery didn't happen in a magical place behind a waterfall through a space-time portal. It happened in the geography we still inhabit today. What's there now and why?
• LEDES: If your great-grandfather had been kidnapped off the west coast of America and taken to an alien planet in chains, and you'd then been living in a forced labor camp in four generations on Planet X, where you had relationships, work, and a story, how would you want an encyclopedia article to tell your story? Put yourself in the body and mind of the person you're writing about, and then create a lede that incorporates that perspective. Some specific prompts:
  • Where did they live? Was he a saltwater slave? Was she a native Virginian, or Bajan, or from the north coast of Jamaica, or was he born and raised on a sugarcane plantation in X Parish, Louisiana?
  • What was their work? Wet nursing and childcare? Household management? Sex work? Was he a smith, a wheelwright, a joiner? Were they working parents? Avoid archaic language like mammy or field hand or concubine outside of direct quotes. If you were writing this person's résumé for a present-day job search, how would you describe their work experience?
  • Musical talents? Hobbies? Special skills?
• Names: In many cases, prior to emancipation, the enslaved were bought and sold under a single name. Surnames were generally adopted after freedom. Use the names used in primary source documents, as they change over the course of a person's lifetime. So at the beginning of an article someone might be Annie, but in their obituary and on their grave marker, Annie Hampton.
• Name names: Hold owners and traders to account, in part because it's historiographically valuable. If there are records that name owners, slave vendors, shipping companies, etc., do include them wherever appropriate and reasonable. This inclusion contextualizes slavery as a constantly reinforced system that was repeatedly chosen by enslavers. It didn't just happen by chance. There wasn't a slavery miasma.
• Biographies of the enslaved are just that, biographies, whole-life stories. It's hard to collect *any* detail in some cases, but seek evidence about the person's life before and after they were in bondage.
• Almost any biography benefits from associating events with a person's age at time of event. Scrape for any all specific detail to give texture to people's lives. You may have to do math. "His fourth divorce was finalized on October 11, 1985, when he was 47 years old." "Her sixth and final child was a winter baby, born when Elizabeth was 27 years old. The male child, whose name may have been Alphonse, after his uncle, was born January 15, 1716, and died 46 days later of unknown causes." "Zeta Montgomery was five years old when the news of emancipation reached Texas, an occasion now celebrated as Juneteenth."
• Outline the negative space: Many articles about the enslaved are thin gruel because the people in question were not considered people. They were often (but not always) poor, illiterate, and marginalized. If your person vanishes into history and/or is missing from records where they should be found, say so in the article. If you can't find basic vital statistics, say so. If the documentary record says they were illiterate and destitute, say so. You're not insulting or diminishing the subject of the article, you're pointing out that the people in power in this person's country or community shamefully failed to include them as full persons.
• If sources in conflict in any way, include both/all accounts. If the paperwork says she was 19 was she was sold but her son says she was 14, include the son's account even though we're taught that the written record is reliable and oral histories are unreliable. Allow marginalized people to tell their own stories in their own words. Do not favor a white person's version over a black person's.
• Sources may all date from one brief period of a person's life but if there's enough material, extract the details and tell the story in chronological order, beginning to end, of course identifying from whom and when the material derives.
• SLAVE TRADERS: If you can't find biographical info on a guy bc there's too many records of his slave sales, find his wife and track her instead. In some cases this will surface otherwise obscure census records etc
• Runaway slave ads: use owners as authors if listed, otherwise use name of person signing ad. Consider using type=Advertisement
• Be suspicious of fake titles. These dudes absolutely loved an unearned honorific. Sometimes they were actually captains in the Revolutionary War, or colonels in the state militia, but there were also a lot of Judges So-So and Colo. Gump that were about the quasi-feudal system reinforcing itself. You are under no obligation to carry this nonsense forward.