Rod Clare, Elon University:
“Biographical Dictionary is a beautiful, sad, and poignant telling of the lives of those enslaved, created from a wide variety of sources … A treasure chest for anthropologists, sociologists, and historians who can process the raw data, this book is sure to provide work for years to come in these fields.”
G. Patrick O’Brien, University of Tampa:
“The Biographical Dictionary of Enslaved Black People in the Maritimes has opened the door for scholars to answer the many questions Whitfield has helped illuminate. Thus, Whitfield’s crowning achievement lies not only in capturing the lives and experiences of otherwise marginalized people, especially in New Brunswick, but also in providing an entry point for generations of scholars seeking to further our understanding of slavery and the individuals who were ensnared by it.”
Nina Reid-Maroney, Huron University College:
"Whitfield’s work, the result of a deep immersion in the existing record, confronts and transcends the limitations of its disparate sources, using individual entries to collect and interpret biographical information about the lives of 1,465 people enslaved in the Maritimes in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."
T.H. Breen, author of The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America:
"From scattered and obscure records, Harvey Amani Whitfield has brilliantly reconstructed the varied lives of enslaved people in the Maritimes. This impressive work is not only a welcome addition to the study of Atlantic slavery, but also a model of archival research."
James W. St.G. Walker, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Waterloo:
"Although Canadian slavery is no longer a ‘secret,’ there is no other volume with this extent of detailed evidence. This dictionary offers a lively, intimate, and authoritative portrait of Black enslavement in the Maritimes."
Karolyn Smardz Frost, Senior Research Fellow, A Black People’s History of Canada, and Governor General’s Award–winning author of I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad :
"What a tour de force! With meticulous research, evocative and accessible writing, and deep compassion, Harvey Amani Whitfield has provided all of us with a gift that will grace the shelves of both scholars and interested readers for a generation and more."
Michele A. Johnson, Professor of History, York University:
"Harvey Amani Whitfield weaves together an incredible array of scattered documentation to make an enormous contribution to breaking the silences and muted tones in Canadian history and historiography about the lives of enslaved people of African descent in the Maritime colonies."
