Winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2020 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography "Exhilarating…A rich resurrection of a forgotten history." —Parul Sehgal, New York Times 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. 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. 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. Here, for the first time, these women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments recovers these women’s radical aspirations and insurgent desires. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780393357622 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Norton W. W. & Company Inc. Publication Date: 01-14-2020 Pages: 464 Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.30(d)About the Author Saidiya Hartman is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Lose Your Mother, Scenes of Subjection. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and lives in New York.Table of Contents Table of Contents A Note on Method xiii Cast of Characters xvii Book 1 She Makes an Errant Path through the City The Terrible Beauty of the Slum 3 A Minor Figure 13 An Unloved Woman 37 An Intimate History of Slavery and Freedom 45 Manual for General Housework 77 An Atlas of the Wayward 81 A Chronicle of Need and Want 123 In a Moment of Tenderness the Future Seems Possible 155 Book 2 The Sexual Geography of the Black Belt 1900. The Tenderloin. 241 West 41st Street 161 1909. 601 West 61st Street. A New Colony of Colored People, or Malindy in Little Africa 177 Mistah Beauty, the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Woman, Select Scenes from a Film Never Cast by Oscar Micheaux, Harlem, 1920s 193 Family Albums, Aborted Futures: A Disillusioned Wife Becomes an Artist, 1890 Seventh Avenue 205 Book 3 Beautiful Experiments Revolution in a Minor Key 217 Wayward: A Short Entry on the Possible 227 The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner 229 The Arrested Life of Eva Perkins 257 Riot and Refrain 263 The Socialist Delivers a Lecture on Free Love 287 The Beauty of the Chorus 297 The Chorus Opens the Way 345 Acknowledgments 351 Notes 355 List of Illustrations 419 Index 425 Show More