Domestic Abuse in the Novels of African American Women: A Critical Study

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 Bye 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.