Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France

Mitchell's research is rigorous and presented in a riveting way. Indeed, Vénus Noire is essential reading for any historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, as well as history enthusiasts.--The Society for the History of Collecting
Based on extensive research in primary sources, Vénus Noire is a groundbreaking study of how, despite their relatively few numbers in metropolitan France, black women were weighted with powerful symbolic valence. French writers, scientists, and artists all depicted black women as sexualized, mysterious, and uncontrollable "others," thus burdening actual black women with living their lives in tension with these stereotypes. Mitchell brings to life the biographies of three particularly well-documented black women, while deconstructing artistic and literary icons of many more, to show how French discourse produced race and gender from the Revolution and Napoleonic era through the Second Empire. Haunting, breathtaking, and riveting, this book will linger in your mind long after you close its pages.--Sue Peabody "author of Madeleine's Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France's Indian Ocean Colonies"
Vénus Noire, apart from breaking this reader's heart, attests to the ongoing significance of the relational, intersectional approach in the study of European empire.--Gloria Wekker "New West Indian Guide"
By demonstrating the points of intersection and parallel between these Black women's stories, Mitchell illuminates the ongoing contentiousness that undergirded France's relationship to Black subjectivity and Black sexuality in an era marked and striated by slavery and its abolition.--H. Adlai Murdoch "H-Net France Forum"
The book is a triumph not only because it shows how narratives around black women's bodies have evolved, but because Mitchell unashamedly makes the personal political.--Kate Lister "The Guardian"

In this attractively written, handsomely illustrated volume, historian Robin Mitchell discusses the lives and representations of three Black women in nineteenth-century France in the context of the devastating loss of France's most profitable colony at the time: Saint-Domingue.... In exemplary intersectional fashion, the study brings issues of race, gender, and sexuality to the fore, with regard to both the book's three protagonists and the French metropolitan population.

--Gloria Wekker "New West Indian Guide"
A much-needed tour de force. . . . Mitchell offers an insightful analysis of black women's bodies as framing the discourse around national identity in post-revolutionary France.--Ashwiny O. Kistnareddy "Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora"
A timely and historically grounded Black feminist contribution to the study of race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial period....Essential reading for any scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, Vénus Noire is an exciting contribution to the field of French studies.--Sage Goellner "Oxford University Press French Studies Journal"
Ambitious, thought provoking, and engaging.--Carolyn J. Eichner "American Historical Review"
Having taught this book in an advanced undergraduate seminar on the history of modern France, I can attest that Vénus Noire yielded rich discussions about the overlooked construction of whiteness as part of French national identity in the nineteenth century, and prompted students to reassess the salience of race in shaping what we know about this time period, even inspiring some to further pursue this topic in their own research. The book would also be a perfect addition to a course that touches upon imperial history, race, or gender and sexuality. It is, in sum, a welcome and much-needed addition to the limited body of scholarship on Black populations, and especially women, in France in the nineteenth century.--Caroline Séquin "Journal of Modern History"