Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

By: Saidiya Hartman
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

What was the fate of the first generations of black women born after abolition in America? Struggle: to create autonomous and beautiful lives, to escape new forms of servitude, and to live as if they really were free. This book re-creates the radical imagination and wayward practices of these young women by describing the world through their eyes.

Re-creating their fragmentary life stories using a combination of archival research and virtuosic literary imagination, a very different vision of the 20th century emerges, one that offers an intimate chronicle of black radicalism. Here is an aesthetic and riotous history - a revolution in tastes and mores that set the stage for the Jazz Age and the social upheavals. The decades between 1890 and 1935 were decisive in determining the shape of 20th century modernity, and young black women were the unacknowledged agents of that transformation.
©2019 Saidiya Hartman (P)2019 Hachette Audio UK
History Social Sciences
Show More Show Less
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

 In the Wake cover art
Necropolitics cover art
Read Until You Understand cover art
Black and Blur cover art
Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 50th Anniversary Edition cover art
Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power cover art
The Paper Daughters of Chinatown cover art
Gorilla Killer cover art
My Vanishing Country cover art
A Parallel Life cover art
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl cover art
Afropessimism cover art
Assata cover art
Recollections of My Non-Existence cover art
The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey cover art
Unveiled cover art

What listeners say about Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    18
  • 4 Stars
    4
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    13
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    15
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for alinabutt3

Thank you

Thank you for sharing these stories and narrating the horrors of this time. Beautifully written

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Anonymous User

It’s worth sticking with the awful narration

One of the most extraordinary books I have encountered in a long time. However the narrator *literally* sounds like she is phoning it in. Like I’m expecting her to say “your call is important to us” at any moment. An incredible book that is worth bearing with the teeth grindingly awful narration

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful