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Rachel Jean-Baptiste is Associate Professor of history at the University of California, Davis. She has previously published Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon (2014), as well as articles in edited books and academic journals. She is co-president of the Coordinating Council for Women in History and serves on the boards of the African Studies Association and the UK editorial collective of Gender and History.
'This wonderful book opens up the question of race in Africa in two ways: departing from colonial visions of métissage, it follows instead how multiracial Africans themselves lived, conceived, and debated their identities in the French empire. Secondly, Jean-Baptiste demonstrates that local actors acted first and foremost as global thinkers, inventing forms of multiracial internationalism that still matter enormously today.' Florence Bernault, Center for History, Science Po 'Rachel Jean-Baptiste's study of racially mixed people in colonial French Africa is not just the story of the making of a category but of the men and women who inhabited it, who tried to make their lives within a colonial racial order, and who acted collectively to challenge that order. Her deeply researched account brings out the ambiguous and contested meanings of race, colonialism, citizenship, and community.' Frederick Cooper, New York University 'This is a pathbreaking book that expands the history of childhood and race in Africa and rethinks our methods for studying intimacy and emotions. With case studies drawn from diverse archives, Jean-Baptiste combines a discussion of state welfare policy with attention to children's rights and considers colonial sexualities from the point of view of Africans.' Stephanie Newell, Yale University
