Beauty in violence: (Re) imagining violence and trauma in Yvonne Vera’s without a name and under the tongue
Date
2021
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Abstract
This research report is a study of how Yvonne Vera re-imagines violence and trauma by
creating alternative ways to narrate the traumatic experiences of women, creating both new
spaces for them to speak and highlighting possibilities of healing. This study will focus on two
of Yvonne Vera’s texts Under the Tongue and Without a Name and how they form part of
lineage in black women’s writing that congregates around beautiful expression in order to
capture black women’s experience. Both texts deal with particularly difficult forms of violence:
incest, rape, and infanticide. It is the contention of this study that while violent and traumatic
experiences are difficult to speak of and narrate Vera manages to do so in a manner that
maintains the dignity of her characters. This research therefore aims to highlight that through
the use of aesthetics and transcending the limitations of ordinary language and physical space,
Vera’s characters occupy new spaces in which to express themselves. Vera contributes to the
discourse on trauma and re-imagines violence and trauma, encouraging us to find new
perspectives on both while creatively forming new ways of speaking to violence within African
literary studies, ways that continue to be reflected in contemporary women’s writing and
poetry.
Description
A research report submitted to the Department of African Literature, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2021
Keywords
Yvonne Vera, Trauma and violence, Aesthetics of violence, African literary feminism, Zimbabwean literature, Zimbabwean history.