'The terror of trees and streets': Lynching, rape, and interiority in African American women's fiction.

摘要

This dissertation examines the significance of terror and trauma in writing produced in the twentieth century by African American women. The aim of this study is to chart the ways in which discourses on lynching have facilitated and/or limited black women writers' ability to articulate the violent victimization specific to their race and gender. Nineteenth century activists like Ida B. Wells expertly demonstrated the correlation between the rape of black women, the myth of the black rapist, and the lynching of black people; yet throughout the twentieth century iconographic representations of lynching by black male writers altered the discourse on violence so that black women's gender-specific victimization was devalued if not altogether dismissed. This marginalization was made possible in part by the lack of documentation to support the particular history of terror enacted upon black women and the resultant forms of trauma. In response, black women writers have authored texts which both subtly suggest and graphically depict experiences of violation, thereby reclaiming excluded histories and simultaneously asserting their right to participate in discourses which rely directly or indirectly on the recognition of suffering.