Book Club Read: The Women's House of Detention, Ep. 220
Welcome to The Librarian Is In, The New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next.
Hello! Happy Summer! This week Frank and Crystal discuss The Women's House of Detention by Hugh Ryan. Jefferson Market library branch, where Frank is Library Manager, is located right next to where the women's prison used to be in the Village, so this book has a unique tie to NYPL. Crystal also suggests a book that she feels ties into this week's read: Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman.
And, as you heard at the end, Crystal and Frank are taking July off for celebrations and openings and all good things! They'll be back in August. We'll still be releasing episodes during July—*the producer is furiously figuring that out now!* Best of? Compilations of Frank singing? Supercuts of Crystal's ASMR and Frank's guessing? Stay tuned!
The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
by Hugh Ryan
In this singular history of a prison that once stood in NYC’s Greenwich Village, a noted historian explores the roots of the queer and trans incarceration crisis, connecting misogyny, racism, state-sanctioned sexual violence, colonialism, sex work and the failures of prison reform. (Publisher summary)
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
by Saidiya Hartman
Hartman 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. (Publisher summary)
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