Author:
Hartman, Saidiya V. author.
Edition Statement:First edition.
ImprintNew York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]
Descriptionxxi, 441 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Note:A note on method -- Cast of characters -- 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 -- The sexual geography of the Black Belt. 1900. The tenderloin. 242 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 future: a disillusioned wife becomes an artist, 1890 Seventh avenue -- 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.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:"In wrestling with the question, "What is a free life?" many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship 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, Wayward Lives narrates the story of this radical transformation of black intimate and social life. It re-creates the experience of young black women who desired an existence qualitatively different than the one that had been scripted for them, and, for the first time, credits them with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives seeks to recover the radical aspirations and insurgent desires of these young women."--Provided by publisher.
