The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation

Content Warning: This section discusses the system of race-based slavery in the United States, the commodification of enslaved people, execution, sexual assault, rape, and trafficking in human corpses.

Berry pays particular attention to the commodification of women in relation to their reproductive capacity. Depending on historical period and region, how did this capacity raise or lower women’s external valuation, and why?

Berry discusses “third-party rape” as an occurrence that challenges conventional definitions of rape that depend on a victimizer and a victim. How so?

Berry often asks a string of questions after introducing enslaved people about whom little is known, especially of their intellectual lives. Using one such instance from the text, answer the following: What sorts of reflections do you think Berry wants to provoke with these questions? How do these questions push for an understanding of the book’s topic that deviates from traditional scholarship on the subject matter?