“And she says here, unable to nurse their infants regularly, they endured the pain caused by their swollen breasts. In one of the most popular slave narratives of the time, Moses Grandy related the miserable predicament of slave mothers. On the estate I am speaking of, those women who had sucking children suffered much from their breasts becoming full of milk, the infants being left at home. They therefore could not keep up with the other hands: I have seen overseer beat them with raw hide, so that the blood and milk flew mingled from their breasts.”
-Jessica reads Angela Davis’ Women, Race & Class for a bookclub
Jessica became a first time mother during the pandemic lockdown. As her body goes through immense hormonal and physical transformation, she was also admitted to the E.R. twice within two weeks of the birth for hemorrhage and a kidney infection.