This was an amazing read. It was pleasure to read about slaves and free blacks using the law to gain or maintain freedom. It was interesting to learn about the fight for freedom through the us of law in Cuba, Virginia and Louisiana.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book. I learned so much from this book even though at times it was a little hard to read. It is incredible to see how race and our society was formed. It explains a lot and it is a very relevant issue that needs to be understood by so many.

This is an excellent and insightful text. The authors carefully examine the differences in three different slave societies: Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana, and how they carved out spaces for themselves in these societies. I appreciated that the examination considered both the legal and cultural aspects of slavery, as well as their intersections.

Becoming Free, Becoming Black by Alejandro de la Fuente, Ariela J. Gross

Becoming Free, Becoming Black written by Alejandro de la Fuente, Ariela J. Gross is a compelling read investigating life as Blacks enslavement to freedom in Cuba, Virginia, Louisiana. This non-fiction examination is scholarly. Becoming Free, Becoming Black focuses on the differences of laws regarding slavery in Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia and how it was viewed by the French, Spanish, and Europeans differed.

This book would be an asset in high school and college history courses or an additional resource for adults desiring to understand African Americans' struggles.

I received a copy of this book provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion.


This is a great historical book on the history of how slaves in Cuba, America were freed. I enjoyed the loads of information this book had to offer. However, the topic of the book is very heavy. When we speak of slavery we hardly tell the story of the slave. What is being told is the story from the enslavers perception. This book explains the life of a slave and the societies built to maintain.

A must read to understand the identity of enslaved Africans.

***I was granted an ARC of this via Netgalley from the publisher.***

When we think of slaves obtaining freedom, in general we only think of them obtaining it by running away, buying their freedom, being freed in the will their owner after death or rebelling. However, their were other ways in which slaves gained their freedom and how they were able to obtain and the ease with which they could obtain it was based on the slave society in which they lived. This is explored in the book Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana by Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J Gross. In this book, the efforts of slaves to become free and how society viewed their attempts to gain freedom and their status afterward are examined in three separate slave societies: Cuba, Virginia and Louisiana. The authors do an excellent job at showing why these slave societies were different. They also shed light on how slaves took advantage of laws made to closely link black skin to slavery to their advantage to argue for their freedom on legal grounds. From claiming white and Native American descent to fighting how much their freedom should cost, slaves did what they could with the legal tools available to them. This book was very educational and presents it information in a clear and concise way. Definitely, a book to read if one is interested in how slave societies work and how slaves adapted and found a way to carve out a space for themselves in them.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars. Would highly recommend to a friend.

A lot of fascinating detail about how the laws surrounding freedom for enslaved people (including laws about interracial marriage, manumission and self-purchase) constructed the meaning of slavery and of race. Where there were more free people of color and a tradition of less-racialized slavery, in Cuba, enslavers found it harder to make race and slavery coterminous conditions, despite attempts to borrow from the British/Americans the concepts they developed to degrade blacks. The laws governing free people of color—suppressing churches, schools, and militias/ownership of firearms and dogs—became models for Jim Crow after the American Civil War. Tidbit that stood out to me most, showing the age of the argument “we wouldn’t have needed to deny you rights if you hadn’t been so mean to us!” is a quote from a New Orleans observer in 1856: “It is probable that the South would have continued merely to apologize but for the denunciations of the abolitionists, which led to the... consequent conviction that slavery, as it exists in the United States, in all its aspects, moral, social, and political, is not inconsistent with justice, reason, or religion.”

‘Becoming Free, Becoming Black’ is a vitally needed transnational study of history, racialization, and the law. Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela Gross make a deeply compelling argument about the laws of freedom, not the laws of enslavement, determining one’s racial categorization. This constitutes a major shift in how scholars have historically considered the legal construction of race in the Americas. Their findings will undoubtedly shift how legal historians, sociologists of law, and others describe the transition from unfreedom to freedom in the Atlantic world. Absolutely excellent!

Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross's Becoming Fee, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana is an academic deep-dive into the history of the relationship of 'blackness' and slavery, particularly in legal precedence, in historical slave societies in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana. The beauty this treatment on the subject of slavery is how it highlights the efforts within each slave society from the enslaved to gain their freedom whereas most other books on the subject give more focus to the cessation of slavery from the initiative of the 'whites' or Europeans.

This is not an enjoyable read. The writing quite challenging and academic in tone and the topic is heavy. However, it's an important read and one that will serve to enrich scholar's understanding of the topic.

Thank you to Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross, Cambridge University Press, and NetGalley for allowing me access to the electronic advance release copy of book for review. As always all opinions are my own.

This is an excellent book that chronicles how free people of colour got their freedom in Cuba, as well as the US states of Virginia and Louisiana mostly in the 1800s. It traces how Cuba's Iberian influence meant that they already had their own set of codes and laws for the treatment of people and colour as well as a slavery system and contrasts this with how things operated in Virginia and Louisiana, and how the differences in British and French law as well as Spanish added to how the white lawmakers and influencers created their systems by which to "classify" (for lack of a better term) what constituted a black person at a certain time and what did not. The book also chronicles cases of people who tried to prove in a court of law that they were white, and the parameters used to establish whiteness, such as "virtuous deeds" and respect among other whites, etc.

It was an eye-opening look at a sub-topic of this historical area, and I appreciated that it was written with the general reader in mind and not too academic or stuffy, and it did not use overly complicated language. I also liked the division overall of how the book was organized and the order in which ideas were discussed. As well, it was helpful from the introductory material to know more about the scholars involved and their respective backgrounds.

Overall, I feel that readers who want to know more about this subject will have excellent source material to engage with in "Becoming Free, Becoming Black."

A comprehensive and academic look at the road to freedom for many enslaved and what achieving that freedom meant. It's a common misconception that enslaved African people in the Americas and the Caribbean merely accepted their fate of enslavement, waiting passively for the 19th century when Europeans would finally see the immorality of slavery. In reality, enslaved people fought against slavery from the beginning, both violently and through the legal courts. It was a struggle they endured for the full 300 years of the transatlantic slave trade.

BECOMING FREE, BECOMING BLACK looks at the societies of Cuba, Virginia and Louisiana to investigate the journey to freedom for enslaved peoples in these communities and the difficulties those in power had in accepting the status of freed-person for those who had brought in as slaves. This led to a classification of "black" that defined formerly enslaved people in a way that made it legally acceptable to deny them the rights of citizens.

This book is great because it shines a light on a part of history that is often and pushed aside. The fight for freedom was not done on behalf of enslaved people as they stood by passively but one that they began and were gradually supported in. It is incredibly academic, which at times might be difficult to read if you are unused to reading dense academia but incredibly informative.

Becoming Free, Becoming Black is a deeply researched non fiction that provides the reader a detailed understanding of the legal and cultural aspects of slavery. The book is, as its description states, a primary source review of legal precedent around slavery in Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia.

My personal preference for historical non fiction is more towards a writing style that feels more like a novel than a literature review. I also received the book as an advanced reader ebook so it lacked many final edits and touches that would make reading an ebook easier. I make an assumption here that the final version will include a table of contents, hyperlinked footnotes, and formatted tables and charts. I know that the lack of these added to the challenge of reading such a richly researched book.

I found the stories of the people throughout history to be highly interesting but I didn't find the book to be easily accessible and readable. I found myself skimming a great deal through densely packed paragraphs. As an academic myself, I can appreciate the writing style. And I find the subject matter incredibly important. However, overall I found this book to be a worthwhile, but challenging read.

A book needed In African American and Latino studies. A must read to understand identity and how Africans brought to land for economic reasons became blacks.