Silences That Bend: Jesmyn Ward, Saidiya Hartman, and Rearticulating Silences in Black Feminist Non-Fiction

ABSTRACT: "Silences that Bend" argues that Black feminist memoirs figure silence as material. Considering silence as material contributes to conversations in Black feminist studies by interrogating silence not as the antithesis of expression—as early Black feminist writers might have claimed—nor as a wholly resistive tool—as contemporary scholars in Black Studies claim. Rather, silence is both expressive and internal, harmful and healing. I analyze two memoirs, Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman and Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward to theorize the ways in which these writers articulate violent silences as physical sources of harm. Rather than "breaking" silence, the two memoirs instead write around and through that silence to protect and heal those who need it. Hartman uses "critical fabulation" to allow silence to remain unfilled but apparent, to insist that readers address their unspoken expectations for access to intimate and often violent images. Ward, by contrast, uses Patricia Hill Collins's tool of "rearticulation" to rework the silence to meet her own needs, protecting her loved ones from details that would wound them while demanding readers bear witness to brutal violence. Through the contrast of these two approaches, this article argues that the memoir form creates a space for critiquing silence and for transforming it into a balm.