"Sell out warning! Literature discussion group Bristol Queerants hosts a collective close reading of MacArthur Prize winner Saidiya Hartman’s exploratory non-fiction gem. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments combines meticulous research and imagined narratives to reconstruct the radical lifestyles of Black American women post-emancipation."
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A event held at Watershed on Friday 22nd May. The event starts at 18:30.
BRISTOL QUEERANTS - SAIDIYA HARTMAN - WAYWARD LIVES, BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS
Bristol Queerants is a queer left discussion group.
This session we will discuss Saidiya Hartman’s book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals.
It explores gender norms, the legacy of slavery and beauty as resistance. Hartman uses a technique she calls ‘critical fabulation’ to reconstruct the lives of young Black women at the turn of the 20th century.
We will focus on the short chapter ‘Mistah Beauty, the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Women’ - about Gladys Bentley, a queer performer in New York in the 1920s who challenged gender stereotypes.
We ask you to read the 10-page chapter beforehand. (If you don’t get time to read it, please come anyway!)
If you’d like to come, please register and we will share a PDF. Content note: the text includes historically contextual racist language, which we won’t read aloud.
Entry requirements: 18+
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