Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval is a 2019 nonfiction book by Saidiya Hartman. Hartman is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, where she specializes in African American and American literature. Wayward Lives is situated at the turn of the 20th century in northern US cities during the Great Migration. It explores the lives of young Black women who migrated North for better lives with greater possibility. Hartman examines free love and Black intimacy as ordinary acts of radical freedom.

This study guide refers to the 2019 W. W. Norton & Company edition. Please note that the contents reference sexual assault.

Plot Summary

Each chapter is discrete, zooming in on a different aspect of Black life in northern cities at the turn of the 20th century. Chapter 1 begins in 1900 in Philadelphia, where ethnic minorities live among each other in a slum. Reformers take photographs of ordinary things, but there is more to the slum than they can see. The poor Black people in the area are perceived as criminal and morally degenerate, but they are exercising new ways of being free.

Chapter 2 examines a nude photograph of an anonymous Black girl taken by Thomas Eakins in 1882. The coerced photograph evokes the tie between female sexuality, race, and the history of slavery. Hartman aims to write about girls like the one in the photograph but with a focus on the beauty of their lives rather than the misfortune. Chapter 3 opens with the 1883 incident when Ida B. Wells is forcibly removed from her seat on a Tennessee train. Wells resists the ejection, but she is eventually relocated. She later takes the railway company to court. Seeking to publicize racial injustice, Ida B. Wells writes about anti-Black and sexist discrimination.

Chapter 4 follows teenager Mattie Jackson (née Nelson) upon her arrival from Virginia to New York in 1913. Someone who would have greeted new arrivals would have been Victoria Earle Matthews, the founder of the White Rose Mission for young Black girls. Meanwhile, Mattie Jackson finds work and explores her sexuality. After two failed relationships with men and becoming a mother, Mattie is condemned for sexual promiscuity. She is sent to Bedford Hills New York State Reformatory for Women, where she faces abuse.

In Chapter 5, Hartman writes in the style of a dictionary entry for the word “manual.” The definitions relate to physical labor and objects owned and used for such labor. Hartman’s meditation on “manual” leads to a commentary on self-possession, autonomy, and Black intelligence.

Chapter 6 follows W. E. B. Du Bois when he moves to Philadelphia to carry out his sociological study on the conditions of Black people. He is commissioned to do this study because of rising concern over crime rates, prostitution, poverty, and unemployment. He creates graphs and charts, and he interviews his new neighbors on the nature of their intimate relationships.

In Chapter 7, Mamie and James Shepherd are new tenants in the building owned by housing reformers Helen Parrish and Hannah Fox in Philadelphia. Helen believes Mamie is more respectable than her uncouth neighbors and seeks to protect her. But Mamie also practices free love and refuses to be reformed. Soon Mamie and James are gone as quickly as they came.

Chapter 8 is a meditation on the challenges to Black marriage and romance. Couples dream of a happily ever after but must face poverty, unemployment, and mortality rates. Chapter 9 recounts a hot New York night in 1900. May Enoch is arrested for false charges of prostitution as she waits for her man, Kid, outside a bar. After Kid stabs the white policeman mid-arrest and flees, the murder triggers four days of anti-Black violence in retaliation. Chapter 10 follows Mary White Ovington, a white woman who sympathizes with Black people. She and W. E. B. Du Bois discuss the blurred gender and gender roles among the poor Black community.

Chapter 11 focuses on queer entertainer Gladys Bentley. Bentley performs in cabarets and nightclubs, where Black women dance and feel free. Bentley faces discrimination and, in the end, is repressed into heteronormativity. In Chapter 12, a young actress named Edna is married to Lloyd Thomas, but as her fame increases, he becomes unfaithful. Edna likewise begins a romantic relationship with Lady Olivia Wyndham. When Olivia moves in with Edna and Lloyd, both spouses can be romantically free while remaining married in the public eye.

In Chapter 13, Harriet Powell is arrested in a club for charges of prostitution due to her casual sexual relationships. The growing number of Black migrants in New York City has raised panic over sexual immorality, and legislators find new ways to police Black sexuality. Chapter 14 uses the same dictionary entry style as Chapter 5, but for the word “wayward.” Waywardness refers to rebelliousness, impropriety, and communal movement toward new possibilities.

In Chapter 15, Esther Brown prefers to live freely rather than keep a steady job and a monogamous relationship. An undercover detective arrests her for prostitution. New York’s Tenement House Act is frequently abused by law enforcement to arrest young Black women. In Chapter 16, Eva Perkins is arrested in her own home by police who are searching for her neighbor, Shine. Shine is a common name and a representative figure of Black male resilience.

Chapter 17 follows Eva Perkins to the Bedford Hills reformatory, where many young women are sent and abused. Meanwhile, her husband writes to her and the institution’s authorities in hopes of getting her released. In 1919, the girls in Bedford Hills revolt, joining in a rebellious chorus of screams and destruction.

In Chapter 18, Hubert Harrison gives a series of lectures in 1917 on the principles of free love. His white admirer Henry Miller writes about these ideas as well, and they are credited to him. Chapter 19 is about young lesbian Mabel Hampton, who moves to New York to dance in a chorus. As she ages, she experiences various relationships with women and matures into an interest in opera and masculine fashion. Finally, Chapter 20 explores the “chorus” of young Black women in cities who dream of better lives. They struggle collectively for freedom through their ordinary, everyday acts of autonomy.