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The literary tradition begun by Zora Neale Hurston in the 1930s has since flourished and taken new directions with a diverse body of fiction by more contemporary African-American women writers. This book examines the treatment of domestic violence in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Gayl Jones's Corregidora, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place and Linden Hills, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Love, Terry McMillan's Mama and A Day Late and a Dollar Short, and Octavia Butler's Seed to Harvest. These novels have given voice to oppressed and abused women.
The aims of this work are threefold: to examine how female African American novelists portray domestic abuse; to outline how literary depictions of domestic violence are responsive to cultural and historical forces; and to explore the literary tradition of novels that deal with domestic abuse within the African American community.
List of contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction. What's Love Got to Do with It?
Chapter 1. Silence and Reclamation: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
Chapter 2. Dysfunctional Domesticity: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye
Chapter 3. Transformation and Testimony: Gayl Jones' Corregidora
Chapter 4. Voicing Violence: Alice Walker's The Color Purple
Chapter 5. Violent Spaces: Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place and Linden Hills
Chapter 6. Family Violence and Popular Fiction: Terry McMillan's Mama and A Day Late and a Dollar Short
Chapter 7. Family and the Legacy of Violence: Toni Morrison's Love
Chapter 8. Domestic Violence through a Science Fiction Lens: Octavia Butler's Seed to Harvest
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Heather Duerre Humann teaches in the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University. She is the author of multiple books and has contributed essays to edited collections and published articles, reviews and short stories in African American Review, Women's Studies, South Atlantic Review and Studies in American Culture.
