Reviews

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman

05hamiltonk's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful informative sad medium-paced

5.0

After wanting to read this book for years, I'm completely blown away. What an incredible piece of writing. This book is so extremely powerful. It uses research from historical archives to weave stories of real women and queer people after the abolition of slavery. It documents how black people continued to be subjugated long after slavery officially ended. It demonstrates how this was largely through over/corrupt policing, poverty and racial segregation, and how black individuals and communities were demonised. 

This was one of the most accessible historical books I've ever read and I could not put it down. It also managed to leave me feeling so much hope. Would 1000% recommend everyone to read it.

bamairi's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

slinkmalink's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

While this was an excellent history book, describing it only as a history book doesn't do it justice, I thought it was absolutely beautiful
It felt almost anonymous in the way that it sweeps through such different lives and ones that we don't hear about much and treats each of their dreams and lives as just one in thousands of both different and shared dreams, examples of individuals in a chorus, and yet also deeply personal in its treatment of all the women it looked at. 
I just thought it really brought to life in such a poetic way the people behind the limited (perspective wise and quantity wise) sources we have about black women after emancipation and I'm very glad I picked it up

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Content Warnings

Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Racism, Police brutality, Slavery, Racial slurs, Physical abuse, Pedophilia, and Forced institutionalization

helenaruby's review

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

mickstrauther's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

** only loses a quarter of a point because there are places where she could have structured the delivery better and avoided repetition of certain ideas. But this isn’t even worth marking because the book is so important to me in every way. Certainly an Africana studies must-read, but also very interesting and worthwhile for anyone, especially those interested in history and underrepresented histories. 

just_a_black_boy's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

mmg2705's review against another edition

adventurous challenging informative inspiring

4.0

lurchio2509's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

blackringbooks's review against another edition

informative inspiring

5.0

on_your_raedar's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.0

A solid read that had to rate because history is history. I'm rating based on the pacing and writing style, not on the content.

I really enjoyed reading through history from this perspective. It's written in an anthology style with some threads of following the same folks through several chapters. It can be repetitive in sections some chapters are harder to read than others. I questioned who the target audience was several times throughout. After reading some background I figured out that I am not the target audience which is why I didn't enjoy the way it was written several times. 

Would recommend it for folks easing into nonfiction or anyone who hasn't experienced US history through the nonWhite lens.