Nonfiction • Eckleburg

WEEK FOUR: Writing Sexual Violence with Maya Angelou

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Sexual violence is difficult for both readers and writers. Some will avoid both, which is an absolutely valid choice. Some believe the writing and reading of sexual violence is an effective way to spread awareness, make it real and immediate as only narrative can. For some who have experienced sexual violence, reading and writing it can be a cathartic experience in which the voiceless finally have voice and control where once they did not. In Maya Angelou‘s courageous memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” she gifts readers with not only her lyrical voice and master storytelling, but also a trauma shared by many girls and women who survive in silence:

from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou

Because of the lurid tales we read and our vivid imaginations and, probably, memories of our brief but hectic lives, Bailey and I were afflicted—he physically and I mentally. He stuttered, and I sweated through horrifying nightmares. He was constantly told to slow down and start again, and on my particularly bad nights my mother would take me in to sleep with her, in the large bed with Mr. Freeman.

Because of a need for stability, children easily become creatures of habit. After the third time in Mother’s bed, I thought there was nothing strange about sleeping there.

One morning she got out of bed for an early errand, and I fell asleep again. But I awoke to a pressure, a strange feeling on my left leg. It was too soft to be a hand, and it wasn’t the touch of clothes. Whatever it was, I hadn’t encountered the sensation in all the years of sleeping with Momma. It didn’t move, and I was too startled to. I turned my head a little to the left to see if Mr. Freeman was awake and gone, but his eyes were open and both hands were above the cover. I knew, as if I had always known, it was his “thing” on my leg.

He said, “Just stay right here, Ritie, I ain’t gonna hurt you.” I wasn’t afraid, a little apprehensive, maybe, but not afraid. Of course I knew that lots of people did “it” and they used their “things” to accomplish the deed, but no one I knew had ever done it to anybody. Mr. Freeman pulled me to him, and put his hand between my legs. He didn’t hurt, but Momma had drilled into my head: “Keep your legs closed, and don’t let nobody see your pocketbook.”

“Now, I didn’t hurt you. Don’t get scared.” He threw back the blankets and his “thing” stood up like a brown ear of corn. He took my hand and said, “Feel it.” It was mushy and squirmy like the inside of a freshly killed chicken. Then he dragged me on top of his chest with his left arm, and his right hand was moving so fast and his heart was beating so hard that I was afraid that he would die. Ghost stories revealed how people who died wouldn’t let go of whatever they were holding. I wondered if Mr. Freeman died holding me how I would ever get free. Would they have to break his arms to get me loose?

Finally he was quiet, and then came the nice part. He held me so softly that I wished he wouldn’t ever let me go. I felt at home. From the way he was holding me I knew he’d never let me go or let anything bad ever happen to me. This was probably my real father and we had found each other at last. But then he rolled over, leaving me in a wet place and stood up.

“I gotta talk to you, Ritie.” He pulled off his shorts that had fallen to his ankles, and went into the bathroom.

It was true the bed was wet, but I knew I hadn’t had an accident. Maybe Mr. Freeman had one while he was holding me. He came back with a glass of water and told me in a sour voice, “Get up. You peed in the bed.” He poured water on the wet spot, and it did look like my mattress on many mornings…. (80)

In the above excerpt, the narrator Ritie experiences sexual trauma at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. The power in this scene is not only the raw honesty of it, a young girl’s innocence, perspective and experience, but also the education it offers, the frequency and ease in which sexual violence occurs and is kept secret. Let’s take a look at Angelou’s vulnerable and nuanced mastery:

- FOUNDATION: Earlier in the novel, the narrator shares her early childhood in Stamps with her grandmother and brother, where their parents left them. Recently, Ritie and her brother have reconnected with their mother who lavishes them with affection previously denied to them. Enter Mother’s boyfriend.
- HONEST PERSPECTIVE: Through this horrific trauma, Ritie is unaware of its impact. She is a girl and has no understanding of sex or rape. She merely wants to be loved. This honest perspective is not only brutal, it is true and common among young abused children. Though it is painful to read, it educates readers on the reality of how perpetrators manipulate children into keeping their secrets.
- PERSPECTIVE: This violence is told through the survivor’s first person point of view and perspective, immediately securing empathy from the reader. This also allows the narrator to use euphemistic syntax and diction, “pocketbook.”
- SUSPENSE: The reader knows this abuse will continue. It will get worse. The reader has driving questions: how and when will Ritie find her voice, accuse her abuser and survive the trauma? The title, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, supports these driving questions, suggesting some sort of cathartic survival.

Writing Exercise: Sexual Violence

Choose a character and scene from a narrative on which you are currently working. Open a separate document and copy paste the scene into this new document so that you keep your original words. Explore the sexual violence through the survivor’s perspective, language and vulnerability, such as in Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Contributing Faculty

Rae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. Her fiction, prose-poetry and essays have appeared in print and online at The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Diagram, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s, New World Writing, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications and have been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, &NOW Award and Pushcart Prize. She has won awards in fiction from Whidbey Writers and The Johns Hopkins University. She earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins where she continues to teach creative writing and is editor in chief of The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She has also taught in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. She is represented by Jennifer Carlson of Dunow, Carlson and Lerner.

One on One Creative Writing Workshop

If you would like to share your narrative, post it to the discussion board below and share it with your course peers. If you end up expanding this narrative into a fuller work and would like written, individualized feedback on it, we invite you to join us for a One on One Creative Writing Workshop.

WEEK THREE: Writing Subtextual Violence with Alice Munro

Some narrators never allow the reader to know whether a violence actually took place or not. When done well, the actuality of one violence is subtextual to the primary violence delivered through mental and emotional abuse. Violence then becomes both contextual and subtextual within the narrative. Alice Munro‘s “Runaway,” the first short story in her acclaimed collection of the same title is a master example of violence as subtext:

from “Runaway” (2006) by Alice Munro

She had only to raise her eyes, she had only to look in one direction, to know where she might go. An evening walk, once her chores for the day were finished. To the edge of the woods, and the bare tree where the buzzards had held their party.

And then the little dirty bones in the grass. The skull with perhaps some shreds of bloodied skin clinging to it. A skull that she could hold like a teacup in one hand. Knowledge in one hand.

Or perhaps not. Nothing there.

Other things could have happened. He could have chased Flora away. Or tied her in the back of the truck and driven some distance and set her loose. Taken her back to the place they’d got her from. Not to have her around, reminding them.

She might be free.

The days passed and Carla didn’t go near that place. She held out against the temptation. (45)

In the above excerpt, the narrator, Carla, holds this question in her mind after struggling with the loss of her precious goat, Flora. She suspects Flora of running away for much of the manuscript, a parallel to her own running away. In the end, Carla suspects her husband has killed Flora just as he has killed much of her, both pet and narrator held within this sort of invisible cage, though both had opportunities to escape. Let’s take a look at Munro’s master scene:

- FOUNDATION: Earlier in the novel, the narrator shares her husband’s control, abuse and percolating violence. She must step gingerly around him. When Flora, her beloved pet goat, goes missing, the reader suspects the husband, even if Carla is not yet willing to allow herself to suspect him.
- FOILED ESCAPE: Throughout the narrative, a neighbor offers to help Carla escape her controlling and emotionally abusive husband. Carla returns to him like a pet.
- EMPATHETIC JUDGEMENT: The neighbor and reader can’t help but judge Carla for her choices, staying with her abuser, though there is empathy within the judgement.
- SUSPENSE: Munro does not allow the reader a cathartic release of suspense at the end of the narrative. Carla remains in her abusive relationship and this stays with the reader the same way that it stays with any family member or friend of a person in an abusive relationship.

Writing Exercise: Subtextual Violence

Choose a character and scene from a narrative on which you are currently working. Open a separate document and copy paste the scene into this new document so that you keep your original words. Explore the violent scene creating subtextual violence as a landscape to overt violences committed, such as in Munro’s “Runaway.”

Contributing Faculty

One on One Creative Writing Workshop

WEEK TWO: Writing Suspenseful Violence with Cormac McCarthy

Similar to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the narrator in Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road considers killing his young son to save him from a worse fate; however, unlike Morrison’s novel, the narrator in The Road has not yet perpetrated the act. McCarthy presents a master scene in suspense as a father holds his son, both of them hiding from sadistic cannibals:

from The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy

They lay listening. Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be not time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. What if it doesn’t fire? It has to fire. What is it doesn’t fire? Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock? Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly.

He waited. The small nickelplated revolver in his hand. He was going to cough. He put his whole mind to holding it back. he tried to listen but he could hear nothing. I wont leave you, he whispered. I wont ever leave you. Do you understand? He lay in the leaves holding the trembling child. Clutching the revolver. All through the long dusk and into the dark. Cold and starless. Blessed. He began to believe they had a chance. We just have to wait, he whispered. So cold. He tried to think but his mind swam. He was so weak. All his talk about running. He couldnt run. When it was truly black about them he unfastened the straps on the backpack and pulled out the blankets and spread them over the boy and soon the boy was sleeping.

In the night he heard hideous shrieks coming from the house and he tried to put his hands over the boy’s ears and after a while the screaming stopped. He lay listening. Coming through the canebrake into the road he’d seen a box. A thing like a child’s playhouse. He realized it was where they lay watching the road. Lying in wait and ringing the bell in the house for their companions to come. He dozed and woke. What is coming? Footsteps in the leaves. No. Just the wind. Nothing. He sat up and looked toward the house but he could see only darkness. he shook the boy awake. Come on, he said. We have to go. The boy didnt answer but he knew he was awake. He pulled the blankets free and strapped them onto the knapsack. come on, he whispered…. (115)

In the above excerpt, the narrator struggles with a moral question: does he kill his son and save him from a worse death? Let’s take a look at McCarthy’s master scene:

- FOUNDATION: Earlier in the novel, the narrator shares the deep violence perpetrated in the novel’s apocalyptic world including cannibalism and rape. The father has pondered whether or not to kill his son before, saving him from a worse death. To drive the point further, immediately preceding this scene, both father and son discover a locked basement of “human cattle,” some of whom have been partially eaten, their wounds cauterized in order to keep the “meat” fresh over an extended time.
- INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: The narrator, father, questions his ability to murder his son to save him from a worse death, drawing the reader into the same question. Could he do it? Could the reader do it?
- RIGHTEOUSNESS: The moral implication of this violence is palpable. Would it be kinder to give the son a quick death? Or let his son suffer rape and cannibalism over an extended time?
- JUDGEMENT: The narrator presents both the confessor and the judge in this master example. The father questions himself as he cradles his son and hides from the cannibals. Self-judgement is a fantastic way to draw the reader into the internal conflict of a character.
- SUSPENSE: One of the most powerful aspects of this scene is that the narrator suspends the violence. Even when the reader feels a cathartic release of emotion as the “coast is now clear,” the reader knows that in this world the father and son will meet this danger again. The father will ponder this horrific choice again.

Writing Exercise: Suspenseful Judgement and Violence

Choose a character and scene from a narrative on which you are currently working. Open a separate document and copy paste the scene into this new document so that you keep your original words. Explore the violent scene with leveraging suspense and empathy using internal monologue, such as in McCarthy’s The Road.