The birth canal of Black women or women who birth blackness, then, is another kind of domestic Middle Passage; the birth canal, that passageway from the womb through which a fetus passes during birth. The belly of the ship births blackness; the birth canal remains in, and as, the hold. The belly of the ship births blackness (as no/relation). Think now of those incarcerated women in the United States who are forced to give birth shackled, their pain ignored. They are forced to deliver while shackled even when that shackling is against the law. Birthing in the belly of the state: birthed in and as the body of the state. The slave ship, the womb, and the coffle, and the long dehumanizing project; we continue to be the feel and be the fall...out.

— In the wake : on Blackness and being by Christina Sharpe (Page 74)