Second-Class Daughters: Black Brazilian Women and Informal Adoption as Modern Slavery

Join us via Zoom on Thursday, November 7, 3:30 to 4:45 PM, for a book talk by Dr. Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman. Dr. Freeman will be discussing her 2022 book, Second-Class Daughters: Black Brazilian Women and Informal Adoption as Modern Slavery (Cambridge University Press).

A legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, Brazil is home to the largest number of African descendants outside Africa and the greatest number of domestic workers in the world. Drawing on ten years of interviews and ethnographic research, Hordge-Freeman examines the lives of marginalized informal domestic workers who are called “adopted daughters” but who live in slave-like conditions in the homes of their adoptive families. She traces a nuanced and, at times, disturbing account of how adopted daughters, who are trapped in a system of racial, gender, and class oppression, live with the coexistence of extreme forms of exploitation and seemingly loving familial interactions and affective relationships. Highlighting the humanity of her respondents, Hordge-Freeman examines how “filhas de criação” (raised daughters) navigate the realities of their structural constraints and in the context of pervasive norms of morality, gratitude, and kinship. In all, the author clarifies the link between contemporary and colonial forms of exploitation, while highlighting the resistance and agency of informal domestic workers.

Dr. Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman is Associate Professor in Sociology and the Center for African & African American Studies at Rice University. She received her B.A. from Cornell University and her M.A./Ph.D. in Sociology from Duke University. Her books, The Color of Love and Second-Class Daughters, have received multiple awards from the American Sociological Association and other associations for their analysis of intersectional oppression, emotions, and the reproduction of inequality.

When 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm on 7 November 2024
Building On Zoom
Contact Name Elizabeth Amrien
Contact Organization Center for Latin American Studies
Fees free
Open To public