Our nation constantly struggles to understand the lives and lived experiences of enslaved Black Americans. Discussing the lives of enslaved Black people can be complicated.

That complexity can push us towards easy understandings and answers of who they were while inadvertently seeking rebellion in their every word and deed. This search for near constant rebellion through a 21st century lens flattens their lives and experiences.

In Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, Professor Bynum pushes us towards a deeper understanding of the everyday lives of Black Americans like: the poet Phyllis Wheatley, ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and pamphleteer David Walker who urged enslaved Black Americans to break free of slavery.

She pulls us into their internal worlds, and demands we recognize the pleasures they enjoyed as they lived, in spite of their societal station.