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A review by savaging
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman
5.0
Everything that history should be. The lives explored in this book were rejected not only by the patriarchal, capitalist, white supremacist establishment, but also by the Black leaders touting respectability politics and "racial uplift." These "wayward lives" had no manifesto or political representative or recognized social organization. They just pushed for freedom and more freedom, showing tremendous creativity with the tools at their disposal.
While the racial uplift movement promoted a strong work ethic, the figures in this book tried to not to have a job -- particularly trying to escape work as domestics in white households. Instead of displaying a model nuclear family, they explored sexual desire and difference.
Usually it cost them everything. As Black women and queer people they were already status crimes, and the establishment had no qualms with caging them and forcing them to work for white overlords.
But their "beautiful experiments" meant something, opened cracks in the wall, and must be celebrated and honored. I'm so glad Hartman did the hard work of reading between the lines of police reports and social worker complaints to excavate this everyday heroism. Reading this book has reminded me not to be distracted by the big names and grand-standers, and instead look around at the radical, anarchistic wildness in the lives of people who are still ignored or persecuted by systems of power.
While the racial uplift movement promoted a strong work ethic, the figures in this book tried to not to have a job -- particularly trying to escape work as domestics in white households. Instead of displaying a model nuclear family, they explored sexual desire and difference.
Usually it cost them everything. As Black women and queer people they were already status crimes, and the establishment had no qualms with caging them and forcing them to work for white overlords.
But their "beautiful experiments" meant something, opened cracks in the wall, and must be celebrated and honored. I'm so glad Hartman did the hard work of reading between the lines of police reports and social worker complaints to excavate this everyday heroism. Reading this book has reminded me not to be distracted by the big names and grand-standers, and instead look around at the radical, anarchistic wildness in the lives of people who are still ignored or persecuted by systems of power.