| Edition |
First Norton paperback. |
| Physical Description |
xxi, 441 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm. |
| Note |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-418) and index. |
| Contents |
A note on method -- Cast of characters -- Book One. She makes an errant path through the city. The terrible beauty of the slum -- A minor figure -- An unloved woman -- An intimate history of slavery and freedom -- Manual for general housework -- An atlas of the wayward -- A chronicle of need and want -- In a moment of tenderness the future seems possible -- Book Two. The sexual geography of the Black Belt. 1900. The tenderloin. 241 West 41st Street -- 1909. 601 West 61st Street. A new colony of colored people, or Malindy in Little Africa -- Mistah beauty, the autobiography of an ex-colored woman, select scenes from a film never cast by Oscar Micheaux, Harlem, 1920s -- Family albums, aborted futures : a disillusioned wife becomes an artist, 1890 Seventh Avenue -- Book Three. Beautiful experiments. Revolution in a minor key -- Wayward : a short entry on the possible -- The anarchy of colored girls assembled in a riotous manner -- The arrested life of Eva Perkins -- Riot and refrain -- The socialist deliversa lecture on free love -- The beauty of the chorus -- The chorus opens the way. |
| Summary |
"Examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage... Wayward Lives recreates the experience of young urban black women who desired an existence qualitatively different than the one that had been scripted for them--domestic service, second-class citizenship, and respectable poverty--and whose intimate revolution was apprehended as crime and pathology."--Publisher's description. |
| Subject |
African American young women -- Social conditions -- 19th century.
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African American young women -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
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African American young women -- Sexual behavior -- History.
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Single women -- United States -- Social conditions -- 19th century.
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Single women -- United States -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
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Urban women -- United States -- Social conditions -- 19th century.
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Urban women -- United States -- Social conditions -- 20th century.
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Sex customs -- United States -- History.
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Prostitution -- United States -- History.
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Man-woman relationships.
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