Book review: Only the Clothes on her Back

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Only the Clothes on Her Back: Clothing & the Hidden History of Power in the 19th-Century United States by Laura F. Edwards is an engrossing book, definitely not for everyone, but certainly right up my alley. 

The author addresses the special legal designation for textiles and clothing in terms of property ownership with respect to people lacking legal standing in not just the 19th century, but the early days of the United States establishment as a nation. This includes women/children of all races, Black men both free and enslaved, indigenous men, immigrants, etc.

I am not a legal scholar, and sometimes the legalese gets pretty dense here, but the book held my attention because the subject matter is so fascinatIng and engrossing. 

I listened to the audiobook, which was good in terms of breezing through legal jargon, but the voice artist who narrated it employed some unusual pronunciations. Some of them were place names, which wouldn’t register with a listener unfamiliar with those geographical locations (Shreveport, LA and Lowell, MA for example) and how their names are to be pronounced, and others were both legal and textile jargon, again something a lay reader might not notice. 

That said, the narrator put personality and verve into the reading of the book, so take that criticism with a grain of salt, and if you listen to it, just expect that there will be irregularities in pronunciation of terminology, NBD.

A couple highlights I scribbled notes about as I was reading it:

• I loved learning the details of the fluctuating definitions of credit over time, which is to say I did not love it because it mostly sucked for women.
• The conclusion offers a nuanced analysis of the power conferred by military uniforms on formerly enslaved men who joined the Union Army in the Civil War.

This book is certainly not for everyone. That said, if this review piques your interest, definitely check it out!