Literary Trauma

Sadism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in American Women's Fiction

Deborah M. Horvitz
eISBN-13: 9780791491898

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This book examines portrayals of political and psychological trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in the work of seven American women writers. Concentrating on novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pauline Hopkins, Gayl Jones, Leslie Marmon Silko, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood, Horvitz investigates whether memories of violent and oppressive trauma can be preserved, even transformed into art, without reproducing that violence. The book encompasses a wide range of personal and political traumas, including domestic abuse, incest, rape, imprisonment, and slavery, and argues that an analysis of sadomasochistic violence is our best protection against cyclical, intergenerational violence, a particularly timely and important subject as we think about how to stop "hate" crimes and other forms of political and psychic oppression.

ISBNs 0791491897, 9780791447123, 9780791491898
Language English