Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation by Rebecca J. Scott, Jean M. Hébrard (review)

descriptions of the megalomaniac, nervous, and overbearing Monsieur Renard, the reader surmises that he figured as an un-ideal tyrannical force seconded by his wife in Delphine’s life. And yet, the narrator downplays the injurious effect of her parents’ character traits. Rather, she opts for highlighting her own accomplishments, such as embracing her paternal grandfather’s Judaism in order to feel more connected to her heritage as well as to a community. Encouraged by a new Jewish friend, Delphine surpasses her longtime dream of becoming a singer by performing a lead role in the Mariage de Figaro opera. Aside from its personal aspect, Tu choisiras la vie conveys a political message: Renard’s commemoration of the nine fatalities at the Charonne métro station the day after her own tragedy. Thousands had gathered to protest the Algerian War and OAS tactics of silencing those favoring Algerian independence. As the narrator explains, those nine deaths, like her childhood mutilation, inserted innocent victims into the fabric of the Algerian War, whose truth continues to be diluted by “révisionniste[s]” historians (332). Thus, in 2012, year of the fiftieth anniversary of the Charonne incident, Renard began her memoir. University of Texas, El Paso Jane E. Evans Scott, Rebecca J., and Jean M. Hébrard. Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2012. ISBN 978-0-674-04774-7. Pp. 259. $29. Scott and Hébrard recount the dramatic story of the Tinchant family, portraying both their struggles and triumphs across continents and centuries. The narrative starts in Senegambia around 1785 with a young woman “of the Poulard nation” labeled “as some fraction of a pièce d’Inde” (20). She was taken from her home and family, sold as a slave, and given the name Rosalie by her captor. Upon arrival in Saint-Domingue, she was “turned into a person held as property” (20) but gained her freedom in 1799 at the height of the Haitian Revolution. In 1803, she fled to Cuba with her daughter Élisabeth.At this point,the saga shifts its focus to Élisabeth who moved to New Orleans with her godmother, widow Aubert, in 1809. Due to her status as an African woman and fear of re-enslavement, Rosalie decided not to accompany her daughter to the slaveholding state of Louisiana. In New Orleans, Élisabeth was stigmatized as a“person of color,”but her freedom was not jeopardized.At the age of twenty-three, she became engaged to a carpenter named Jacques Tinchant, whom she married in 1822. Her husband was the son of a French colonist and a “Saint-Domingue émigrée woman of color”(72).When Élisabeth’s and Jacques’s freedom became insecure in the 1830s, they decided to move to France. In 1840, they settled in Pau with four of their children, and then moved in 1857 to Belgium. The remainder of the book is dedicated to the lives of the Tinchant children, recounting their collaboration on a cigar business traversing the American and European continents, their political involvement, and the birth and 244 FRENCH REVIEW 87.4 Reviews 245 lives of their children. Scott and Hébrard describe Freedom Papers as “an experiment that might be characterized as micro-history set in motion” (4), which began with an unexpected discovery in the Cuban archives of a letter from Édouard Tinchant to Máximo Gómez, leader of Cuba’s struggle for independence. Their extensive study spans the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and portrays one family’s experience with slavery, oppression, war, and the quest for freedom. It depicts the slave trade, the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution of 1848, the Civil War, and World War II. The authors’ meticulous archival work shows the critical role that official governmental papers can play in the attainment, or prevention, of freedom. The saga of the Tinchants as “citizens beyond nation” portrays the impact of the slave trade as well as the complicated history of the African diaspora. It is clear that the authors spent an immeasurable amount of time conducting their research, as evidenced by the detailed description of acknowledgements and collaborations. Scott and Hébrard highlight people...