Research Catalog

Title

Wayward lives, beautiful experiments : intimate histories of social upheaval / Saidiya Hartman.

Author

Hartman, Saidiya V.

Publication

• New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2019]
• ©2019

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxi, 441 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Summary

"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." -- Publisher's description

Subjects

• Prostitution
• Sex customs
• Nonfiction
• Black author
• Prostitution > United States > History
• Sex customs > United States > History
• Single women > Social conditions
• Single women > United States > Social conditions > 19th century
• Urban women > Social conditions
• Urban women > United States > Social conditions > 19th century
• African American young women > Sexual behavior > History
• Urban women > United States > Social conditions > 20th century
• History
• Single women > United States > Social conditions > 20th century
• 1800-1999
• African American young women > Social conditions > 20th century
• Man-woman relationships
• United States
• African American young women > Social conditions > 19th century

Genre/Form

• History.
• Nonfiction.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-418) and index.

Contents

A note on method -- Cast of characters -- Book One. She makes an errant path through the city. The terrible beauty of the slum -- A minor figure -- An unloved woman -- An intimate history of slavery and freedom -- Manual for general housework -- An atlas of the wayward -- A chronicle of need and want -- In a moment of tenderness the future seems possible -- Book Two. The sexual geography of the Black Belt. 1900. The tenderloin. 241 West 41st Street -- 1909. 601 West 61st Street. A new colony of colored people, or Malindy in Little Africa -- Mistah beauty, the autobiography of an ex-colored woman, select scenes from a film never cast by Oscar Micheaux, Harlem, 1920s -- Family albums, aborted futures : a disillusioned wife becomes an artist, 1890 Seventh Avenue -- Book Three. Beautiful experiments. Revolution in a minor key -- Wayward : a short entry on the possible -- The anarchy of colored girls assembled in a riotous manner -- The arrested life of Eva Perkins -- Riot and refrain -- The socialist delivers a lecture on free love -- The beauty of the chorus -- The chorus opens the way.

Call Number

Sc E 19-804

ISBN

• 9780393285673
• 0393285677

LCCN

2018043118

OCLC

1037810804

Author

Hartman, Saidiya V., author.

Title

Wayward lives, beautiful experiments : intimate histories of social upheaval / Saidiya Hartman.

Publisher

New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2019]

Copyright Date

©2019

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-418) and index.

Local Note

Schomburg copy with dust jacket.

Chronological Term

1800-1999

Local Subject

Black author.

Research Call Number

Sc E 19-804