News Flash

Staff Picks (Cyndi)

Posted on: July 7, 2021

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments - Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

by Saidiya Hartman

A breathtaking exploration of the lives of young black women in the early twentieth century. In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. Hartman narrates the story of this radical social transformation against the grain of the prevailing century-old argument about the crisis of the black family. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship that were indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives recreates the experience of young urban black women who desired an existence qualitatively different than the one that had been scripted for them — domestic service, second-class citizenship, and respectable poverty — and whose intimate revolution was apprehended as crime and pathology. For the first time, young black women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives recovers their radical aspirations and insurgent desires.

Find in our catalog
Facebook Twitter Email

Other News in Staff Picks (Cyndi)

Giver of Stars

The Giver of Stars

Posted on: July 6, 2021
The Age of Phillis

The Age of Phillis

Posted on: July 6, 2021
Lean Against This Late Hour

Lean Against This Late Hour

Posted on: July 6, 2021
The Lions of Fifth Avenue

The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Posted on: July 6, 2021
His Only Wife

His Only Wife

Posted on: July 7, 2021
Monument - Poems - New and Selected

Monument: Poems

Posted on: July 7, 2021
Murder on Cold Street

Murder on Cold Street

Posted on: January 12, 2021
The Gilded Hour

The Gilded Hour

Posted on: January 12, 2021
The Weight of Ink

The Weight of Ink

Posted on: October 29, 2019
Lisette's List

Lisette’s List

Posted on: October 29, 2019
homegoing235.jpg

Homegoing

Posted on: October 30, 2019
Meet Me at the Museum

Meet Me at the Museum

Posted on: October 29, 2019
Mrs Grant and Madame Jule

Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule

Posted on: October 29, 2019
The Woman Who Fell From the Sky

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems

Posted on: October 29, 2019
Battle Dress

Battle Dress: Poems

Posted on: October 29, 2019
Nine Gates

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Posted on: October 29, 2019
If They Come For Us

If They Come for Us: Poems

Posted on: October 29, 2019