I don't even know where to start with this review. I'm still reeling from Hartman's entire approach to the blend between storytelling, imagination, and archival work. I recently read somewhere that a classicist must be an linguist, historian, and writer altogether, and I feel like even though I don't know the single word for what Hartman is, she similarly must be a storyteller imaginer practitioner and archivist.
Her method uses the archive like a skeleton, and then the practice of critical fabulation is what provides the muscle, skin and detail (at least from my understanding). She uses this to dive into black America post slavery in order to more intimately understand revolution and existence for those oppressed to the margins of society. For me, this book is both a triumph in methodology, and in the ideas actually being conveyed.
To start with the methodology I am an absolute awe of how well researched this book is. It includes photographs and documents and each chapter has its own notes in the back of the book. These direct callouts to the archive are so important, and I would caution those listening to the audiobook because you obviously can't see the pictures. I really wish that the notes were actually footnoted so that you could see it as you read when she is directly referencing archives. Similarly, I wish that there had been captions to the photographs with the context of how and where she found them. If this was an intentional choice, I would love to know more about the why behind it. I'm now just so obsessed with the idea of practicing imagination to explore, truths that are immaterial or unrecorded.
Onto the book itself. As someone really new to reading queer theory/academic historic writing, and just in general having been STEM core for the last six years or so, this book totally floored me. It filled a lot of gaps; both ones that I knew and didn't know I had in my understanding of black America in the 20th century. It also challenged a lot of of the social science writings I had encountered on the topic of global development. I remember those articles often describing how the system failed black Americans, which explained social issues in their communities. However, this book really caused me to question that framing, rather asking: if the system is working perfectly, and was designed to caused this harm how will it be destroyed and subverted?
I had three chapters I particularly loved. The first is A Minor Figure, which is grounded by a photograph taken of a naked young black girl, posed by a white photographer, that focuses on the idea of consent and assumed access/ownership to black/femme/young bodies. Mistah Beauty, focuses on the life of Gladys Bentley, expressing his life as if it had been a Oscar Meacheaux film. It has a lot of really interesting ideas about gender, masculinity and the value/cost of being out. If you only have 10 minutes to give to this author, try and find Wayward a Short Entry on the Possible. Hartman really gets at the crux of what she's trying to express in her book, that “Waywardness is a practice of possibility.”
I think Hartman could really knock it out of the park by writing a version (companion) of this book that is aimed at middle and high school students because this would have so much value in the American classroom as a connection between super dry textbooks and pretty limited fiction included in classrooms.