Akosua Paries-Osei (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Seditious Seed of Forbidden Flowers: The legacy of Okra in the Reproductive Resistance of Enslaved women"
The utilisation of African medicinal knowledge during slavery has historically been overlooked and often dismissed, but contemporaneously, it disrupted the business of slavery and the authority of Western doctors and slave owners. This was particularly pertinent regarding African women's knowledge of herbal abortifacients and contraceptives. This paper examines the use of African botanical abortifacients and contraceptives by enslaved women as sites of reproductive resistance in Jamaica.
Botanical knowledge of abortifacients and contraceptives was transferred from Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean with the enslaved. Slavery rendered the enslaved female's body the legal possession of her owner; her womb and her reproductive capacity became a site of contestation and control. The ability to bear children was, for her owner, the ability to reproduce wealth in the form of human stock. The ability to control her fertility, for the enslaved woman, was often an act of political defiance, in the face of overwhelming violence and coercion.
This paper highlights the use African plants enslaved women used in African and Jamaica Abelmoschus esculentus. L, to manage and control their fertility. The abortifacient and contraceptive qualities of Okra was utilised during slavery and beyond. It has been incorporated into modern Western contraceptive treatments; the enduring legacy of enslaved women’s reproductive resistance and knowledge has continued to shape and control women’s fertility, now as it did then.