Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019) by Sadiiya Hartman

 Book Review

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019)

by Sadiya Hartman

New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century, 96

  When the New York Times published their Best Books of the 21st Century last month I was excited to see that they had both Fiction and Non-Fiction, books in translation and books in English and books by both non-American and American authors.  To often lists like this are parochial- "Best American Novels of the 21st Century," for example or they are perversely limited to one TYPE of book- usually the novel, to the exclusion of other forms of literature.   The New York Times list isn't flawless- there is little or no representation of poetry- but overall it's a good mix of fiction and non-fiction, foreign and domestic.  I've read most of the fiction titles but few of the non-fiction picks.

   Hartman writes about the lives of so-called "wayward women" of the American urban core in the early 20th century- almost entirely focusing on African-American women who were judged by the system to be dangerous enough to be sent away to a reformatory for up to three years at a stretch for crimes like having a child out of wedlock or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time coming home from work.  Hartman blends the non-fiction of facts she has gleaned from 20th century court documents with fictionalizations of the women from those documents.

  

 As Hartman repeatedly points out, the oppression in these pages is not hypothetical, but represents decades of actual lives ruined in the name of social progress.  Almost of all the court proceedings she discusses took place without the women being represented by anyone- a lawyer, a social worker, and truly once you were taken into the system, a place would be made for you.   Hartman also convincingly makes the point that many of these women were the direct inspiration for the American popular culture that emerged from the jazz age.   Women like Zelda Fitzgerald became  immortal icons, while the black-girls who inspired her went to the reformatory (and Zelda also got institutionalized, let's not forget.)