Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

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

7 reviews

meganpbell's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5

This intense, experimental history weaves together biography, archival record, period photographs, and a kind of radical act of imagination to tell the stories of Black and queer women in Philadelphia and NYC at the turn of the century—their experiments in love, living, sex, family, gender, autonomy, and more—all while under severe legal, societal, and police oppression. This is a challenging read—it’s easy to get lost, but it’s a worthwhile part of being “wayward.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Homophobia, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Classism, Confinement, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Sexism, Grief, Transphobia, Torture, Slavery, Sexual violence, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, Police brutality, Emotional abuse, and Child abuse

historicalmaterialgirl's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring slow-paced

4.75

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments takes such a moving and humanizing approach to telling the history of Black women at the turn of the 19th century. Where the archive sometimes provides little information, Hartman fills in the gaps with speculation that reveals and reaffirms the complexity, the personhood, the resistance, the desires, and the freedom dreams and actions of whoever she is focusing on in that chapter. This is a blend of history, theory and imagination (it feels wrong to call this fictional!) that tells these women's stories with them, not the researcher or the audience, at the center. This was amazing, one of the best I have read this year. A new way of thinking about history is unlocked in my brain!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Sexual violence, and Police brutality

Moderate: Homophobia

dominic_t's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative sad medium-paced

5.0

This is absolutely fantastic. One of the best books I've read all year.

It's a history book, but it's written through the eyes of the Black people who are the subjects. The book focuses on gender marginalized Black people. Most are cis women, but some of them expressed masculine identities and ambivalence regarding gender and might not have identified as women. The author used archival materials to glean details about their lives and then wrote from their perspectives. She provided historical context as to what was going on around them and how that might impact their choices. The author has a lot of love for the people she's writing about, and that comes through in the text. I think it's great that she expresses admiration for the people she writes about. She points out the ways in which their lives were groundbreaking and innovative. She shows how they struggled and fought back against a deeply racist, cruel society. 

I also learned a lot about the Great Migration, and she showed very clearly how the anti-Black policing at that time provided a foundation for the racist policing practices today. She writes very detailed accounts of lynching and prison conditions. It was sometimes painful to read, but it gave me a really clear look at what was going on at the time.

I really liked the framing devices she used. She had some chapters that compared the subjects' stories to movies or theater. She used archival photos in ways that really enhanced the story.

Overall, this was a great book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Rape, Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Racial slurs, Child abuse, and Emotional abuse

antonique_reads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Abandonment, Racism, Racial slurs, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Police brutality, Miscarriage, Violence, Sexual harassment, Physical abuse, Lesbophobia, Infidelity, Homophobia, Forced institutionalization, Emotional abuse, Classism, Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, and Death

lauraglovestoread's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Absolutely incredible -- Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments is absolutely one of the best books rooted in archival research that I've ever read.  In recognizing "the revolutionary ideals that animated ordinary lives" [xv] Hartman works with the goal of learning from Black women who experimented with new ways of living and community-building and connecting that resisted the racist and patriarchal criminalization, pathologization, and violence surrounding them.  The argument: that "young black women were radical thinkers who tirelessly imagined other ways to live and never failed to consider how the world might be otherwise" [xv].  In working with fragments - arrest records, photos, case files - Hartman speculates on what has been lost, what these women might've been thinking and feeling, the text "marked by the errantry that it describes" [xiv].  Highly, highly recommend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Forced institutionalization, Racism, Racial slurs, Police brutality, and Confinement

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Misogyny, Torture, and Sexual violence

Minor: Gun violence

mmcloe's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Absolutely astonishing understanding of the archives and history and aesthetics and radical optimism. Hartman is the most exciting scholar writing right now and the combination of her prose talents and the depth of her research (evidenced by the hundreds of footnotes) is unmatched in any genre. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Slavery, Homophobia, Misogyny, and Rape

adesinabrown's review

challenging dark informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

I wish I could go above 5 stars for this book. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Rape, Racism, Racial slurs, Torture, Slavery, Sexual violence, Pedophilia, Infidelity, Homophobia, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Hate crime, Misogyny, and Sexism

Most (if not all) triggering content is only mentioned briefly in this book--in possibilities, in truths, in the complexities. It is mostly a reconstruction of the lost stories of Black women and queer people of the early 20th century, and an examination of why those stories are "lost" in the first place. Expect any content that may be wrapped up in that.