Description:
Winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism
Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the 2020 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Named one of the Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times Book Review
"Exhilarating...A rich resurrection of a forgotten history." --Parul Sehgal, New York Times
Brief description: Saidiya Hartman is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Lose Your Mother, Scenes of Subjection. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and lives in New York.
Review Quotes: Weaving in and out of disciplinary standards for both historical and archival works, Wayward Lives employs tools such as speculative imaginings and possibility to elaborate on the potential thoughts, wishes, and fears each character might have experienced. Hartman is at her most virtuosic in these moments of supposition, where entire pages, sections, and chapters hinge on key words like 'perhaps, ' 'maybe, ' and 'possible.' She deftly points to what we can never know about these figures while underlining what we know for sure: that they lived, struggled, thought, and loved.--Jehan Roberson "Public Books"