Edited by Lisa A. Lindsay and John Wood Sweet

Introduction: Biography and the Black Atlantic
PART I. PARAMETERS
Chapter 1. A Historical Appreciation of the Biographical Turn
-Joseph C. Miller
Chapter 2. Understanding the Slave Experience in West Africa
-Martin Klein
Chapter 3. Robinson Charley: The Ideological Underpinnings of Atlantic History
-Sheryl Kroen
PART II. MOBILITY
Chapter 4. Black Pearls: Writing Black Atlantic Women's Biography
-Jon Sensbach
Chapter 5. Recovered Lives as a Window into the Enslaved Family
-Cassandra Pybus
Chapter 6. From Slave to Wealthy African Freedman: The Story of Manoel Joaquim Ricardo
-João José Reis
PART III. SELF-FASHIONING
Chapter 7. David Dorr's Journey Toward Selfhood in Europe
- Lloyd Kramer
Chapter 8. Methodology in the Making and Reception of Equiano
-Vincent Carretta
Chapter 9. Remembering His Country Marks: A Nigerian American Family and Its "African" Ancestor
-Lisa Lindsay
PART IV. POLITICS
Chapter 10. The Atlantic Transformations of Francisco Menéndez
-Jane Landers
Chapter 11. Echoes of the Atlantic: Benguela (Angola) and Brazilian Independence
-Roquinaldo Ferreira
Chapter 12. Rosalie of the Poulard Nation: Freedom, Law, and Dignity in the Era of the Haitian Revolution
-Rebecca Scott and Jean-Michel Hébrard
Afterword
-James Campbell
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments

In Biography and the Black Atlantic, leading historians in the field of Atlantic studies examine the biographies and autobiographies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century African-descended people and reflect on the opportunities and limitations these life stories present to studies of slavery and the African diaspora. The essays remind us that historical developments like slavery and empire-building were mostly experienced and shaped by men and women outside of the elite political, economic, and military groups to which historians often turn as sources.
Despite the scarcity of written records and other methodological challenges, the contributors to Biography and the Black Atlantic have pieced together vivid glimpses into lives of remarkable, through previously unknown, enslaved and formerly enslaved people who moved, struggled, and endured in different parts of Africa, the Americas, and Europe. From the woman of Fulani origin who made her way from Revolutionary Haiti to Louisiana to the free black American who sailed for Liberia and the former slave from Brazil who became a major slave trader in Angola, these stories render the Atlantic world as a densely and sometimes unpredictably interconnected sphere. Biography and the Black Atlantic demonstrates the power of individual stories to illuminate history: though the life histories recounted here often involved extraordinary achievement and survival against the odds, they also portray the struggle for self-determination and community in the midst of alienation that lies at the heart of the modern condition.
Contributors: James T. Campbell, Vincent Carretta, Roquinaldo Ferreira, Jean-Michel Hébrard, Martin Klein, Lloyd S. Kramer, Sheryl Kroen, Jane Landers, Lisa A. Lindsay, Joseph C. Miller, Cassandra Pybus, João José Reis, Rebecca J. Scott, Jon Sensbach, John Wood Sweet.