Rebel against white middle-class social norms and values, were met withĬriminal punishment and interference from social workers. Black women were relegated to domestic work, were paid low wages, and were forced to live in segregated neighborhoods in poorly maintained apartment buildings with grossly inflated rents.Īny attempts to express agency, experience joy, or rebel against white middle-class social norms and values, were met with criminal punishment and interference from social workers.Īny attempts to express agency, experience joy, or Unfortunately, when they reach these cities, they find similar racial discrimination that they endured in the south. Throughout Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Hartman tells the story of young Black women hoping to secure better opportunities and lead better lives in the north. In the early 1900s, Black folks in the southern US began migrating to northern cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, to escape the vestiges of slavery. Based off archival documents, such as social work case notes, court transcripts, and photographs, Hartman creates a counternarrative to the pathologized poor Black girl that has been embedded in our society Hartman reframes bad, immoral, and wayward behavior as beautiful experiments and true expressions of agency. In her latest book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, professor and 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Saidiya Hartman, explores the untold stories of young Black women who migrated to New York and Philadelphia from the southern United States shortly after emancipation.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman | Nonfiction | Serpent’s Tail | 416 pages | review by Jenn Augustine Her way of living was nothing short of anarchy.”

To wander through the streets of Harlem, to want better than what she had, and to be propelled by her whims and desires was to be ungovernable. She knew first-hand that the offense most punished by the state was trying to live free.

Wayward lives hartman