Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

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. 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. 'A breathtaking exploration of the lives of young black women in the early twentieth century.

The socialist delivers a lecture on free love The anarchy of colored girls assembled in a riotous manner Mistah beauty, the autobiography of an ex-colored woman, select scenes from a film never cast by Oscar Micheaux, Harlem, 1920sįamily albums, aborted futures : a disillusioned wife becomes an artist, 1890 Seventh Avenueīook Three. A new colony of colored people, or Malindy in Little Africa

In a moment of tenderness the future seems possibleīook Two. The terrible beauty of the slumĪn intimate history of slavery and freedom She makes an errant path through the city. Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-418) and index.īook One.

Wayward lives, beautiful experiments : intimate histories of social upheaval / Saidiya Hartman. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.Request This Author Hartman, Saidiya V., author. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments recovers these women's radical aspirations and insurgent desires. Here, for the first time, these women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman