Marie Rose appears in the colonial punishment record as a line, not a life.

In this episode of Rewritten in Their Names, I read what was written about her on the Moka Estate in Trinidad, then sit with what the archive leaves out: her presence, her refusal, and the ordinary courage of a woman who did not exist to be managed on a page.

This episode includes mention of punishment and the language of the colonial record. There is no graphic detail, but the themes may feel heavy. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you.

Beyond the record, her truth lives.

In 1824, a Book of Punishment from the plantation called Friendship in the Quarter of Savoneta, Trinidad, recorded a woman named Nancy. In this episode of Rewritten in Their Names, I read Nancy’s entry aloud and sit with the fragments that remain of her life and of other enslaved women in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean.

Content note: This episode includes references to corporal punishment, hunger, and the violence of enslavement.

In each episode, I call the name of one enslaved woman

and read her offense and punishment exactly as it was recorded.

Our focus is the woman, not the spectacle of enslavement.

We sit with her line in the archive to honor her memory,

to insist that she existed, and to remember that she endured a system

designed to break her.