Scan barcode
A review by lacy30twin1
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman
Did not finish book.
I was not a fan of this book. I was expecting historical telling of the lives of ordinary black women. I wouldn't have minded if some of the stories were embellished. This was not what I was expecting.
First off, the writing style was very poetic with extremely long sentences. Nothing needs to be that descriptive. One chapter was her definitions of a word or term I don't even remember now. Whatever it was, it was a waste of space in a book advertised as the historical telling of wayward women. Second, most of this "historical" story telling is just assumptions made up by the author about small pieces of historical documents she came across. She made up whole back stories based off of a picture in one chapter. Third, this whole book was all over the place. A chapter early on was like 70 pages and jumped around between two nameless women/girls. I didn't realise it was two different people she was talking about until half way through, which at least help me realize why the two tales were so disjointed.
Then she included a chapter about what she thinks W.E.B Dubois was thinking while studying black life in the ghettos. Ma'am, his views are well documented. Why is there even a chapter on what you think this man was thinking in a book about the lives of black women?
I did not make it far in this book. I didn't enjoy any parts that I read and often said to myself 'I can't believe a black woman wrote this!' While I am absolutely not a fan of Victorian type, lyrical writing, this book was awful for me because of the content more so than the writing style.
First off, the writing style was very poetic with extremely long sentences. Nothing needs to be that descriptive. One chapter was her definitions of a word or term I don't even remember now. Whatever it was, it was a waste of space in a book advertised as the historical telling of wayward women. Second, most of this "historical" story telling is just assumptions made up by the author about small pieces of historical documents she came across. She made up whole back stories based off of a picture in one chapter. Third, this whole book was all over the place. A chapter early on was like 70 pages and jumped around between two nameless women/girls. I didn't realise it was two different people she was talking about until half way through, which at least help me realize why the two tales were so disjointed.
Then she included a chapter about what she thinks W.E.B Dubois was thinking while studying black life in the ghettos. Ma'am, his views are well documented. Why is there even a chapter on what you think this man was thinking in a book about the lives of black women?
I did not make it far in this book. I didn't enjoy any parts that I read and often said to myself 'I can't believe a black woman wrote this!' While I am absolutely not a fan of Victorian type, lyrical writing, this book was awful for me because of the content more so than the writing style.