This Insurgent Ground

“Golden challenges readers to engage with the Great Dismal Swamp as an expansive site of possibility, both favorable and dangerous. Her insurgent ecology includes the flora and fauna of the swamp and Black women who dared to make freedom, raise families, and participate in rebellion in a space enslavers regarded as impenetrable. In this much-needed challenge to literature on the region that regards the Great Dismal Swamp as solely the domain of men and masculine rebellion, Golden uses a diverse source base to assert Black women’s integral role in surviving and resisting enslavement by moving in, around, and through the swamp’s often-confounding landscape.”—Vanessa M. Holden, author of Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community

“Timely and innovative. Kathryn Benjamin Golden powerfully explores gendered resistance and liberatory histories of the Great Dismal Swamp. In doing so, she pushes us to rethink how we understand Black ecologies and placemaking in the present.”—Tamika Y. Nunley, author of The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime, and Clemency in Early Virginia

“A refreshing new study of Great Dismal Swamp marronage that pushes readers to think more capaciously about the role of Black women’s resistance in early US history.”—Marcus P. Nevius, author of City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763–1856