Daina Berry discusses her book The Price For Their Pound of Flesh

Daina Berry discusses The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade. This book is the culmination of more than ten years of research, drawing on data from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, Dr. Berry resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives.