Black women and trauma: finding healing through poetry after experiencing sexual violence

Abstract

The historical construction of the Black female body as hypersexual, abnormal and unrapeable is rooted in racist colonial ideas that have over time become politicised and naturalised thus creating a society that is uniquely oppressive towards Black women. The high levels of sexual violence in South Africa is due to intersecting variables that go beyond the ideology that women living in certain bodies are readily available for sex and that men cannot be defined outside of their numerous sexual conquests. State sanctioned violence from the time of Apartheid has spilled over into every facet of public life in democratic South Africa and this violence is transferred into homes in the form of Gender Based Violence and Femicide. South Africa is a country founded on the trauma of Black people and the brunt of that trauma is carried by its women. The need for alternative forms of understanding, processing, making sense of and healing from this trauma has reached a crisis level and this paper offers poetry as a therapeutic tool that can be used by Black women to heal from the long term trauma caused by sexual violence. This study is concerned with theories of colonisation, racism, misogyny, rape culture and patriarchy as systems of oppression. Through a Decolonial and Intersectional lens, the study will illuminate why it is that Black women are more vulnerable to sexual violence because of the bodies that they are in and the socioeconomic conditions that they are faced with. Decoloniality offers the opportunity to look beyond where we are right now with Black women being marginalised and silenced because of how they have been constructed and invented through the heterosexual male gaze. It offers the opportunity to reimagine and re-create a different society where self-definition is possible. Intersectionality being the second theoretical framework used provides a multidimensional view into the lives lived by Black South African women, which is often thought of as homogenous and singular. Using methodologies such as Critical Discourse Analysis, Narrative Analysis and Thematic Analysis to analyse the poems chosen in this study brings us to the conclusion that indeed poetry can be used as a therapeutic tool by Black women to process, understand, make sense of and express the wounds caused by the trauma of sexual violence. Drawing from the works of both published and unpublished authors of poetry such as Koleka Putuma and Amina Deka Asma, this study is an empathetic take on the unseen and often forgotten consequences of toxic masculinity and rape culture.