The poetics of sexual violence in three African-American women’s neo-slave narratives: Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and Toni Morrison’s Beloved

This paper focuses on the representation of sexual violence in the neo-slave narratives of Margaret Walker, Octavia E. Butler and Toni Morrison. Through an exploration of mind-modelling in three key scenes, a range of linguistic techniques are employed to elucidate the psychological component of such violence. Each of the three authors examined here exposes, in stylistically distinct ways, different but equally devasting aspects of the violence visited upon enslaved women. Taken together, a holistic poetics of sexual violence and slavery emerges: the myth of volition and consent is dismantled, and the representation of trauma is brought to the fore.