Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives,
Beautiful Experiments examines the revolution of black intimate
life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of
the twentieth century. In wrestling with the question of what a free
life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship
indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds
of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to
subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire
fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like
slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Here, for the first
time, these women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that
transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and
literary imagination, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
recovers these women’s radical aspirations and insurgent desires.