Saidiya Hartman facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Saidiya Hartman
Hartman in 2020
Born	1961 (age 63–64)
Nationality	American
Education	Wesleyan University (BA) Yale University (PhD)
Occupation	Writer, academic
Known for	MacArthur Fellow

Saidiya Hartman, born in 1961, is an American writer and professor. She studies African-American history and culture. She teaches at Columbia University in New York City. Her work looks at Black literature, history, photos, and how laws affect people.

About Saidiya Hartman

Early Life and Education

Saidiya Hartman grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She went to Wesleyan University for her first degree. Later, she earned her PhD from Yale University.

Her Career and Awards

Hartman started her teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992. She taught English and African American Studies there until 2006. In 2007, she joined the faculty at Columbia University. She became a University Professor at Columbia in 2020. This is a very high honor.

She has received many important awards. These include the Fulbright and Rockefeller fellowships. In 2007, she won the Narrative Prize. In 2019, she received a MacArthur "genius grant". This award is given to talented people in many fields. In 2022, she became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also chosen as an International Writer for the Royal Society of Literature.

What Saidiya Hartman Studies

Saidiya Hartman is interested in many topics. She studies African-American and American literature and history. She also focuses on slavery, how laws and stories connect, and gender studies. She is part of the team that edits the journal Callaloo.

She has written several important books. These include Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (1997). Another book is Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007). Her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval came out in 2019. She has also written many essays.

Understanding History and Slavery

"Critical Fabulation"

Saidiya Hartman created the idea of "critical fabulation." She writes about it in her article "Venus in Two Acts." She also uses this idea in her books. Critical fabulation means combining history, research, and fictional storytelling.

Hartman uses this method to understand the lives of enslaved women. Historical records often don't include their voices. Critical fabulation helps her fill in the missing parts of the story. She says her work connects ideas with stories. She uses concepts to build a picture of situations and people.

The "Afterlife of Slavery"

Hartman also talks about the "afterlife of slavery." This idea is in her book Lose Your Mother. It means that the effects of slavery are still present today. Even though slavery ended, its impact on society continues. This includes unfair chances, limited access to healthcare and education, and early deaths.

Hartman explains that Black lives are still undervalued. This is because of ideas about race that started centuries ago. She writes that she herself is part of the "afterlife of slavery." She traveled to Africa to learn more about slavery. This journey helped her understand herself better.

How Slavery Changed People

Hartman's first book, Scenes of Subjection, looks at slavery, gender, and racism. She explores how slavery affected people's lives. She uses old diaries, legal papers, and songs to understand this.

Her second book, Lose Your Mother, focuses on how slavery erased the past for many people. It made it hard for enslaved people to know their history. Hartman weaves her own story into this history. She explores how enslaved Africans lost their identity. She says, "To lose your mother was to be denied your kin, country and identity. To lose your mother was to forget your past."

The "Promised Land" Idea

Hartman also writes about the idea of a "Promised Land." Black people who were enslaved often dreamed of a better past. They imagined a time before slavery with kings and queens. They hoped for a future free from racism.

However, when some Black Americans visited Africa, they found a different reality. Many Ghanaians wanted to move to the U.S. for a better life. Hartman notes that African Americans dreamed of returning to Africa. But Ghanaians dreamed of leaving for America. They had different ideas of what the "Promised Land" was.

Studying Historical Records

Looking at Old Archives

Saidiya Hartman has helped us understand historical archives. These are collections of old documents. She shows how to look at them carefully. In her books, she uses and questions these archives. For example, in Lose Your Mother, she reads old slavery stories. She also connects them to places like Elmina Castle in Ghana.

Hartman knows that these old documents are not perfect. They might not tell the whole truth. She tries to read them "against the grain." This means she looks for hidden meanings. She knows it's hard to fully understand the experiences of enslaved people from these records.

"Narrative Restraint"

Hartman also talks about "narrative restraint." This means holding back from telling too much. Sometimes, old records only give a small glimpse of a person's life. For example, she tried to write about a girl named Venus from a slave ship. But there wasn't enough information.

Instead of making up details, Hartman chose to be brief. She only mentioned Venus's fate quickly. This "refusal to fill in the gaps" is narrative restraint. It's a way to respect the missing voices in history. She asks how we can learn new things from these old records.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

Hartman's book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019) explores the lives of Black women. It focuses on women in Harlem and Philadelphia in the late 1800s. She shows how these women lived and resisted rules.

Black women were often watched and judged. Their actions were sometimes called "illegal." But Hartman shows these actions as ways of fighting back. They were creating their own freedom. She asks how we can see Black women beyond just being seen as a "problem."

The book also explains how laws were used to control Black women. For example, laws about housing or performers. Figures like Gladys Bentley, a famous performer, challenged these rules. Hartman also writes about people whose lives are often forgotten in history.

Works

• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019)
• Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)
• Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997)

Images for kids

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  A robot for kids

See also

• In Spanish: Saidiya Hartman para niños