Hartman Book Review<\/p>\n
Rather than a traditional summery, the book review should focus mainly on description and historiographic analysis. The format of reviews should be patterned on those that appear in the Journal of Southern History, American Quarterly, and the American Historical Review.<\/p>\n
Post 1<\/p>\n
Saidiya Hartman\u2019s\u00a0Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval\u00a0is a narrative social history narrating the lives and experiences of several Black women in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Philadelphia and New York City. Hartman argues that these women were part of a generation of young Black women who engaged in what she terms \u201cbeautiful experiments in living free\u201d by acting against the confinements of sexual and gender norms to assert their own self agency, defy \u201csocial law and elude the master, the state, and the police, if only for an evening, a few month,\u201d and pursue their own pleasure against the \u201cconfines of the carceral landscape\u201d of racially-segregated urban communities and the violent enforcement of repressive gender and racial norms (Hartman 17, 24, 30). Through her consultation with sources such as arrest forms, photographs, rag songs, newspaper clippings, and interviews from early twentieth century sociological projects, Hartman charts what she terms \u201cthe transformations of sexuality, intimacy, affiliation, and kinship taking place in the black quarters of northern cities\u201d that \u201cwas part of the general unrest that came to define the age of the New Negro\u201d and rendered \u201cthe third revolution of black intimate life\u201d an urban social revolution (Hartman 60-1). At the same time, this urban revolution was indicative of a wider revolution among Black Americans fleeing violence and repression in the South, illustrating what Hartman describes as a resistance to \u201cthe world imposed\u201d on plantations and a \u201ccollective movement against servitude and debt, [and this] choreographed flight from rape, terror, and lynching was a reiteration, a second wave of an earlier exodus of slaves from the plantation during the Civil War\u201d (Hartman 108). By Hartman\u2019s analysis, the social revolution undertaken by Black women on the stage, their homes, their bedrooms, and in their clothing and attitudes reflected such a rebellion to \u201cthe known world and the vestiges of slavery\u201d that rendered the lives and bodies of Black women constantly subject to exploitation, abuse, and humiliation (Hartman 108). This mass exodus of Black men and women to northern cities to escape the hardships of the Jim Crow South was in and of itself an expression of self and a rejection of the systemic denial of the Black woman and man\u2019s humanity that was reflected in the social revolution of hopeful yet frustrated Black women in urban centers.<\/p>\n
Hartman\u2019s \u201cserial biography of a generation, a portrait of the chorus, a moving picture of the wayward\u201d places Mamie Shepherd, Gladys Bentley, Mattie Jackson, Harriet Powell, and other young Black women at the helm as valuable actresses within a larger historical phenomena shaping what it meant to be both Black and a woman in a nation that devalued both identities as inherently subordinate and inferior (Hartman 31). The intersections between gender and racial identities in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century are frequently articulated throughout\u00a0Wayward Lives, with Hartman noting that Black women were widely regarded as \u201chalf a woman\u201d who failed \u201cto realize the aspirations of womanhood or meet the benchmark of humanity,\u201d situating Black women \u201con the threshold between the dangerous and the unknown\u201d (Hartman 184-6). The sexual and social waywardness of young Black women in late nineteenth and early twentieth century northern cities can ultimately be understood as a front of resistance against this dehumanization and commodification of Black lives and the inescapable world of \u201cintermittent wages, controlled depletion, economic exclusion, coercion, and antiblack violence\u201d (Hartman 237).\u00a0<\/p>\n
On a side note, I would just like to mention that I really enjoyed this text, both for Hartman\u2019s prose and her biographical approach to relaying the social and historical changes spearheaded by young Black women in northern cities between 1880 and 1930. Hartman also does an incredible job relaying how Black women\u2019s gender and racial identities came to a head on multiple occasions, effectively subjecting them to a particular kind of violence and dehumanization that was unfamiliar to Black men and white women.<\/p>\n
Post 2<\/p>\n
Wayward Lives Beautiful Experiments\u00a0book one explores black women\u2019s lived experiences post emancipation and their intimate lives. Saidiya Hartman revealed how the North was not much better than the South where black communities were poor, had lack of resources and black men and women had few opportunities to obtain jobs. W.E.B Dubois was assigned to one of these communities where he was pushed to research these communities to explore why there was an increase of crime and violence. The exploration of the evolution of DuBois thought process is explored in Hartman\u2019s work where DuBois first \u201cthought of them as raw recruits and barbarians and blamed them for the crime and squalor of the ward.\u201d (105), but later acknowledged that \u201cunless their movement into the city was checked or real opportunities created, how would they avoid becoming paupers, loafers, whores, and criminals?\u201d (105) DuBois also saw the \u201cflight\u201d (109) of black people leaving the South for the North as a \u201crefusal of the conditions of work and a desperate attempt to make another kind of life.\u201d (109)<\/p>\n
Hartman analyzes DuBois research methodology in her work by noting that DuBois, \u201cstarted the survey with no research methods, just visiting and talking with people.\u201d (101) revealing the bottom up approach that DuBois utilized that represents an anthropological way of conducting research. Hartman noted that DuBois learned \u201cfar more about the Negro problem from them than he had imagined possible.\u201d (101) and that \u201cbeing born of a race didn\u2019t endow him with a storehouse of knowledge.\u201d (101) I thought that the last statement that even though DuBois was a black man, this factor did not \u201cendow him with a storehouse of knowledge.\u201d (101) mimics Jacqueline Jones article where she makes the point that her past does not define her as a historian and makes her less qualified in studying African American history. DuBois had a revelation the evolution of his studies where he discovered that there was \u201cno average Negro, no composite darkey, but distinct classes and modes of life that merited precise and accurate representation.\u201d (113) and that black people were continuing to fight the aftermath of slavery in a society that set most black people up for failure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finally, the story of Mattie and her mother, Caroline caught my attention. When Mattie was forced to go to the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills due to her sexual behavior, her case was described by Hartman as a \u201ccase against her mother\u201d (72) where \u201cpoor upbringing and broken home\u201d (72) contributed to Mattie\u2019s behavior. Mattie\u2019s case represented how black mothers and their daughters were placed together, as Deborah Clarke Hine described in chapter 3 of her book, Ar\u2019n\u2019t I a Woman?, where enslaved women and their children were placed together so the mother could take care of the child and because enslaved men were often separated from their children. Mattie\u2019s case also reminded me of how black women\u2019s bodies became topics in the public sphere of society, as noted in Hine\u2019s book in chapter 1 where enslaved women\u2019s bodies became subjected to stereotypes and the topic of childbearing for slaveholders. In Matties case, her body was a topic in the public sphere of law in American society where her personal experiences were targeted and used as a reason to imprison her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Post 3<\/p>\n
Saidiya Hartman narrates the lives of several Black women who resided in Philadelphia and New York City in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, according to Saidiya Hartman, these ladies belonged to a generation of the target market that engaged in “wonderful experiments in living free.” This text makes it abundantly clear that these women disobeyed social law by opposing the restrictions imposed by sexual and gender norms to establish their own independent agency. They successfully avoided capture by the authorities, the government, and the master. These women’s efforts to pursue their pleasure in defiance of the limits imposed by the carceral landscape and the racially divided neighborhoods that make up the urban areas are unmistakable indicators of their independence. Unfortunately, this paragraph also gives the impression that their nation was obliterated due to the repressive maintenance of gender and racial customs through force (Hartman 30). Despite this, the author of this piece gives a comprehensive account of the uprising of an oppressed minority and the determination of these women to succeed despite the challenges they faced.<\/p>\n
The viewpoint presented in Saidiya Hartman’s text elucidates Black women’s history during migration, rapid urbanization, and the growth of Black communities in a way that benefits one’s understanding of that history. For instance, the urban revolution was a sign of a greater rebellion by African-Americans in the United States. They were fleeing the violence and persecution that was prevalent in the South. In addition, Hartman describes the rapid urbanization as evidence of plantation-imposed resistance from the outside world. In addition, the presence of Black communal structures is presented as a collective fight against slavery and debt. According to Hartman’s point of view, the Black women’s social revolution was a reaction to both the established order and the lingering effects of slavery, which subjected the lives and bodies of Black women to unrelenting exploitation, abuse, and humiliation. Slavery continued to affect Black women’s lives and bodies even after it ended (Hartman 108). Large numbers of black individuals fled to the north’s cities to escape the harsh conditions of Jim Crow laws in the South. This movement was a rejection of the institutional denial of the humanity of Black people and an expression of the self simultaneously. African-American women living in urban areas witnessed a social upheaval that reflected their optimism and anger in this matter.<\/p>\n
Saidiya Hartman encourages a fresh look at the past of African American women’s history. She mentions notable African-American women who were not afraid to speak their minds, such as Gladys Bentley, Mattie Jackson, and Harriet Powell. In addition, she used historical events to redefine what it meant to be Black and a woman in a culture devaluing both identities as inherently inferior and subordinate. This was done in the context of the Civil Rights Movement (Hartman 31). Her text also delves into how gender and racial identities interacted with one another at the turn of the 20th century in the United States of America. As a result, Saidiya Hartman portrays African-American women as the epitome of humanity in an effort to give standards for a woman’s role. In the end, it is possible to interpret young Black women’s sexual and social irresponsibility in northern cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a front of struggle against the dehumanization and commodification of Black life. This interpretation is possible because it is possible to interpret the sexual and social irresponsibility of young Black women in northern cities during those periods. Hartman is asking us to reassess the “waywardness” of Black women’s experiences by investigating the unavoidable realities of inconsistent pay and managed depletion. She does this by exploring these two phenomena. In addition to this, she supports views like the economic exclusion, coercion, and cruelty directed toward individuals of African descent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hartman Book Review Rather than a traditional summery, the book review should focus mainly on description and historiographic analysis. The format of reviews should be patterned on those that appear in the Journal of Southern History, American Quarterly, and the American Historical Review. Post 1 Saidiya Hartman\u2019s\u00a0Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval\u00a0is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-105945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}