This talk explores themes from a new book project that considers Black women’s reproductive care work in the face of miscarriage, infant and child loss, elder care, and sickness. Although this is a book about loss, it is also a book about survival. Professor Simmons argues that during the transition from slavery to freedom, Black mothers mobilized intergenerational and intersubjective connections with other women in their community to manage sickness, take care of themselves and one another, and mourn loss.

LaKisha Simmons is associate professor in History and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on gendered experiences of racial violence and Black women and girls’ strategies for survival in the face of racism. She is the author of Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans and currently at work on a collection called The Global History of Black Girlhood co-edited with Corinne Field.