ÒYOU GOT A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING IN YOUÓ: NARRATION AS RESISTANCE IN CORREGIDORA AND EVAÕS MAN  By   Christina Ann Rann             A THESIS  Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of  Literature in EnglishÑMasters of Arts  2016     ABSTRACT  ÒYOU GOT A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING IN YOUÓ: NARRATION AS RESISTANCE IN CORREGIDORA AND EVAÕS MAN  By  Christina Ann Rann    Narrative has the power to construct worlds both fictional and realÑto carve out spaces for marginalized voices, to engage in the most intimately human conversations, and to open up new possibilities for expression and resistance.  The narrative worlds Gayl Jones constructs in Corregidora and EvaÕs Man betray Òlinearity, logic, and conventional realism,Ó as Trimiko Melancon states (140), in order to challenge our thinking about racialized gender discourses taken up in the law, the economy, and in literary representation.  Using ÒunnaturalÓ narratologyÑa theory that has attempted to grapple with postmodern texts such as JonesÕsÑas a mooring point, this project intends to explore how Jones uses disruptive narrative practices to write up against the boundaries of stereotype and positivist representations of black subjectivities.  By radically shifting how she tells her protagonistsÕ stories, Jones invites her readers to question the many oppressive forces that shape Corregidora and EvaÕs Man while giving her protagonists a way to resist these forces with the power of their own voices, or lack thereof.                                  Copyright by CHRISTINA ANN RANN 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS  IntroductionÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉ.1 Disrupting Racialized Gender DiscoursesÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉ.13 Subverting the Institutional GazeÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉ...35 ConclusionÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉ.51 Works CitedÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉÉ...53 1  Introduction When you tell a story, you automatically talk about traditions, but theyÕre never separate from the people, the human implications.  YouÕre talking about language, youÕre talking about politics and morality and economics and culture, and you never have to come out and say youÕre talking about these thingsÑyou donÕt have to isolate them and therefore freeze themÑbut youÕre still talking about them.  YouÕre talking about all your connections as a human being.  ÑGayl Jones1    Narrative has the power to construct worlds both fictional and realÑto carve out spaces for marginalized voices, to engage in the most intimately human conversations, and to open up new possibilities for expression and resistance.  Within African American literature, the stakes of narrative and representation have taken on highly sociopolitical significances.  As bell hooks states in Black Looks:  Race and Representation, ÒFrom slavery on, white supremacists have recognized that control over images is central to the maintenance of any system of dominationÓ (2); and likewise, representation has become a pivotal space for resisting such systems of domination.  As a result, black authors are perpetually Òworking to transform the imageÓ by Òlooking at new ways to write and talk about raceÓ (hooks 2).  Although hooks encourages a multiplicity of voices throughout Black Looks, implicit in her call for transformative representation is a possibly dangerous reactionary, monolithic politics of respectability that sees racial uplift as its primary concern.  As the epigraph to this project suggests, Gayl Jones writes from a very different position:  she views herself as a storyteller first and foremost, and in stark contrast to many of the ÒrespectableÓ narratives that pepper the post-civil rights moment, she challenges her readers to rethink both white supremacist and racial uplift discourses in her two earliest full-length novels, Corregidora (1975) and EvaÕs Man (1976).                                                  1 Interviewed by Michael S. Harper   2   This is not to say, of course, that JonesÕs novels are not transformative; to the contrary, Corregidora and EvaÕs Man Òtransform the imageÓ by pushing the boundaries of representation at the very level of language, betraying Òlinearity, logic, and conventional realism,Ó as Trimiko Melancon states (140).  In order to fully explore this transgressive literary form, it might be helpful to turn to a particular flavor of narratology, even if the theoryÕs primary authors and objects of study tend not to be dominated by African Americans or members of the African diaspora at large.  Jan Alber ager Heinze, two narratologists working from universities in Germany, are prominent contributors to a type of narrative theory they call Òunnatural narratology,Ó which describes texts, like Gayl JonesÕs, that Òconfront us with strange narrative worlds which rely on principles that have very little to do with the actual world around usÓ (5).  By distorting the Òactual worldÕsÓ physical, temporal, and linguistic boundaries, ÒunnaturalÓ narratives like Corregidora and EvaÕs Man Òhave a defamiliarizing effect because they are experimental, extreme, transgressive, unconventional, non-conformist, or out of the ordinaryÓ (Alber and Heinze 2).   However, Jones engages in this discourse for very different reasons in comparison to canonized white novelists and playwrights, and likewise, we must be careful about accepting the term Òunnatural narrativeÓÑconsidering the loaded connotations ÒunnaturalÓ has when mapped or applied to African American texts.  African American literature at large generally engages in expression and resistance from underneath the weight of centuries of mythic stereotypes that have historically relegated African Americans themselves to the status of ÒunnaturalÓÑeither biologically, sexually, or socio-politically.  In comparison, unnatural narratology has traditionally been used to provide terminologies for scholars of writers like Samuel Beckett who, according to Martin Esslin, were concerned more with a loss of faith and metaphysical  3  ontologies (xix), which is a motivation in stark contrast to JonesÕs.  Corregidora and EvaÕs Man are purposefully anti-mimetic in order to render absurd many mythic grand narratives which dictate the lives of many African American women, while simultaneously representing the psychological trauma and resistance these same women carve out of very liminal spaces. This ultimately distances Corregidora and EvaÕs Man from canonized post-modern literature like Beckett and James Joyce, who are employing and resisting Western philosophy at their core.  Likewise, although the African American literary tradition has been resistive and transgressive as a whole, Jones simultaneously distances herself from other black female writersÑsuch as Jesse FaussetÑwho have, as Amy S. Gottfried states, Òsought to dissociate their bodies from Ôa persistent association with illicit sexualityÕÓ (562). Thus, although I find the terminology in unnatural narratology useful for discussing JonesÕs narrative style, I do so sparingly, while acknowledging the many complications of such an endeavor and with the hope that using these terms will not be enacting a violence against the fluidity and multiplicity of JonesÕs stories, intentions, and contexts. Ultimately, by disrupting the mimetic reading of black narratives, Jones is able to defamiliarize readers from the many discourses that govern our understandings of black womenÕs identities, norms, and behaviorsÑand thus our understanding of black fictional protagonists.  Corregidora and EvaÕs Man draw attention to the way that racialized genderÑthe intersectional whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, race and genderÑhas been scripted, constrained, and pathologized throughout the centuries, ultimately rendering these scripts absurd or nonsensical by utilizing experimental and transgressive narration styles.  In other words, by disrupting traditional literary narratives, these novels are able to also disrupt racial grand narratives.  Brian Richardson, one of the forefront unnatural narratologists, has noted, Òdifferent  4  aspects of human experience can be better or more appropriately depicted through new techniquesÓ (135).  In Corregidora, this consists of a destabilized understanding of the haunting, collective trauma of slavery, while in EvaÕs Man, Jones disrupts our notions of abuse and pathology within the context of racialized gender.  In so doing, Jones strips convention from these texts and from the subjectivity of her protagonists, illuminating the contradictory realities many black women often experience at the hands of oppressive systems of (literary) representation and behavioral scripting.  Understanding every product of these scripting systems would take an innumerable number of pages; however, if we are to enter the narrative worlds of Corregidora and EvaÕs Man, there are a few racialized gender discourses with which readers must be familiarized.  For the purpose of this paper, I will focus specifically on a triad of discourses thoroughly elaborated on in MelanconÕs Unbought and Unbossed:  Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation, and in order to elaborate on them, I will be drawing heavily from other scholars in the field:  (1), the binarism in which whiteness maintains its borders against racist constructs of blackness; (2), black masculinity as it attempts to respond to the subsequent emasculation and marginalization of such binarism; (3), finally, and most importantly, black femininity as it negotiates a constrained space within racist stereotypes and racial uplift narratives.  The attention given to these first two discourses might seem unfairly brief; however, I am most interested in the way that whiteness and black masculinity not only inform but construct racialized gender identities imposed on black women with profound psychological, physical, and/or sexually violent consequences.  The protagonists, Ursa and Eva, both perform and disrupt the scripts produced by these three discourses, illuminating the degree to which they enact a violence  5  against the black female self; therefore, before moving to an analysis of their stories, we must understand the exact nature and context of this violence.  Beginning with the first discourse in MelanconÕs triad, we can see the precarious and vital relationship between whiteness and blackness in defining racial difference and elevating white supremacy in the national psyche:  [I]n order for ÔwhitenessÕ to signify racial/sexual purity, enlightenment, and acceptability, constructions of ÔblacknessÕ within the American and larger Western imagination came to embody both denotatively and connotatively an entirely different set of meanings and semiotics:  as intrinsically licentious, impure, ignorant, and abject. (16) In other words, whiteness depends on its relationship to blackness; it only maintains its borders when it stands in opposition to the other half of the constructed binary.  When this black/white binary intersects with identity categories such as gender, class, and family, multiple layers of social meaning become inscribed on black womenÕs bodies and subjectivities.  For instance, in Private Lives, Proper Relations:  Regulating Black Intimacy, Candice M. Jenkins describes how the nuclear family, Ò[a]ccording to the republican family ideal was imagined to be a microcosm of the unified republic, and thereby acquired civil as well as social importance as a marker of cultural stability and Ônational well-beingÕÓ (6).  This bourgeois construction of the republican family became entangled in the white/black binary because of its ties to MelanconÕs description of whitenessÑpurity, enlightenment, acceptabilityÑand thus became one of the many institutional scripts which excluded African Americans from Ònational belongingÓ as well as the many domestic spaces that are integral to such civic endeavors (Jenkins 5).   In addition to the republican family ideal, historically blackness has been pivotal in maintaining gender constructs, specifically in a stark constructed border to white femininityÕs  6  Òcult of true womanhood,Ó a nineteenth century gender script Òconstituted by four fundamental tenetsÑpiety, purity, submissiveness and domesticityÓ (Melancon 50).  According to Jenkins, Ò[b]ecause of the conditions of their enslavementÑfor example their subjection to field labor or strenuous domestic choresÓ 2 black women became an easily definable border to (white) femininity (7).  Particularly, Hershini Bhana Young states how black women were Òseen as sexual predators, asserting their (sexual) agency to seduce and consume the white masterÓ (ÒInheritingÓ 378).  Thus the black female body was simultaneously necessary and continually reaffirmed in this light to elevate white femininity and the republican family ideal, as well as threatening to both (male and female) whiteness and the white household as a whole, repeatedly Òread as Ôprimitive, as uncontrolled, and as deviantÓ (ÒInheriting 378).  Centuries later, we see these constructed stereotypes repeated rather explicitly in the neo-slave narrative of Corregidora, and more subtly throughout EvaÕs Man, as both Ursa and Eva are often scripted as hypersexual beings, exploited as both visual objects and open invitations for sexual encounters.  Thus Ursa and Eva must negotiate racial discourses that reach out across the fabric of history and continue to mark them as separate from the conservative and ÒrespectableÓ constructs of whiteness.   While negotiating these racist stereotypes inherited from the artificial white/black binary, black women also must define themselves in relation to black masculinity and, according to sociologist Beth Richie, Òthe re-ordering of gender relationships in the Black community in favor of patriarchal structuresÓ (111).  According to Jenkins, men were similarly scripted by Victorian behavior (8) and thus masculinity constructed a similar racial boundary, using black masculinity as the binary opposite of white masculinity:  forced to embody through myth and stereotype the Òextremes of brutality and bestiality and the general threat of the breakdown of civil order,Ó as                                                 2 Sojourner TruthÕs ÒAinÕt I a WomanÓ speech is a famous example that points to the way physical labor excluded black women from the category of womanhood.    7  Ronda C. Henry Anthony puts it (5).  While this allowed white masculinity to safely protect its borders, it also produced an immense Òfear of the uncontainedÓ and the desire to Òcastrat[e], emasculat[e], and feminiz[e]Ó black masculinity (Henry Anthony 5-6).  Thus, just as black women were excluded from femininity, black men were cast out of the construct of Òmanhood,Ó which has produced long-surviving consequences on racialized gender to this day.   Battling these constructs of castrated black masculinity on the national level and the predominance of Òviolence, imprisonment, joblessness, and poverty,Ó Richie argues that black political leaders from the major twentieth-century movements (e.g. the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements) called for Òthe reinscription of heterosexual, nuclear families with concomitant gender and generational hierarchyÓ (111).  This move, in essence, aligned black communities with the heteropatriarchal structures of the white majority and fought conceptualizations of blackness as ÒindecentÓ with gender structures deemed acceptable by the white Western world.  However, this move was also an attempt to recover black manhood from generations of sexual emasculationÑvia slavery, poverty, lynching, and sexual violence (Melancon 28).  As a result, black womenÕs bodies became objects through which black men established their sexual and physical dominance, ultimately becoming Ògoverned by and accessible to (multiple) menÓ (Melancon 20).  Therefore, just as in relation to the white slave masterÕs household and the cult of true womanhood, the era of racial uplift relegated black women to sexual objects and buried Òthe simultaneity of oppressions [for black women]Ñracism, patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, and classismÓ under the move to privilege black men as the Òmajor component of black cultural nationalismÓ (Melancon 28).   The combination of these first two racialized gender narratives created very liminal spaces in which black women could define their own identities and sexualities, and arguably the  8  resulting narrative of normative behavior was even more constraining.  In response to the Òassociation between black womenÕs assumed sexual excesses and the sexual and domestic failures of the race as a wholeÓ (Jenkins 8), black women were conscripted as one of the most important sites for positivist racial uplift narratives meant to transform the image of the African American identity at large.  In part, the black female body was constrained as this site by black men at the forefront of racial political movements who called for nuclear family structures; but this was also reaffirmed by middle-class black women who Òsaw the need to insist upon their own Ôinclusion in the category of protected womanhood,Õ even if that meant the strategic acceptances of values that historically had been designed to disallow themÓ (Jenkins 13).  As a result, black femininity came to be dictated by what Melancon calls ÒÔthe classical black female scriptÕ:  that is, black womenÕs expected racial loyalty and solidarity, sexual fidelity to black men, self-abnegation, and idealization of marriage and motherhoodÓ (3).   The emphasis that the classical black female has on constrained sexuality and decorum often throws black female desire and both black hetero- and homosexual relationships into crisis.  While examining the Òsalvific wishÓÑa synonym for the classical black female script for all intents and purposesÑJenkens emphasizes the Òviolence of [it], the manner in which its restrictive, disciplinary assault upon black bodies constitutes a fearful denial of not simply black intimate expression, but of the chaos and vulnerability of human encounters more broadly conceivedÓ (25).  In Corregidora, we see this crisis of desire and the violence of restrictive gender scripts occurring as Tadpole, UrsaÕs second husband, pushes her to articulate Òwhat she wants,Ó a question she cannot fully answer apart from the script handed down to her by the women that have come before:  ÒÔWhat all us Corregidora women want.  Have been taught to want.  To make generations.Õ  I stopped smilingÓ (22).  As will be discussed more thoroughly  9  later in this paper, we can see how Jones interrogates these many racialized gender discourses as her protagonists participate in and resist these liminal spaces, which is quite clear here:  UrsaÕs own desire is replaced by the script handed to her.  She has been taught how and what to want, and as she articulates this, the smile fades from her face.    Related to this most recent example, RichieÕs interpretation of the classical black female script focuses on the Òsexual fidelity to black menÓ and Òself-abnegationÓ of MelanconÕs definition through what she calls the Òtrap of loyaltyÓ (36).  Taken to its most violent utterance, this racial phenomenon often leads women to be silent in the face of domestic abuse and sexual violence, in the attempt to adopt Òrespectability, propriety, and a politics of silence surrounding sexuality as a means to challenge their stigmatization as the quintessence of devianceÓ (Melancon 22).  Although one could read this trap of loyalty in UrsaÕs relationship with TadpoleÑoften devoid of her own desire and abundant with sentences to the effect of, ÒI said nothing.ÓÑEvaÕs Man engages with this discourse head on.  This second text simultaneously presents Eva as victimized in her uncommunicative response to sexual abuse while also challenging our conceptions of silence as an inherently passive mode of behavior.  Through both of JonesÕs novels, then, we can begin to understand how the trap of loyalty and the classical black female script can limit black womenÕs agency in the face of violence; however, in the way Jones writes up against and transforms so many racial discourses through her postmodern narrative techniques, we must also interrogate what signs we interpret as non-agential or indicative of victimization.    As we can see, black women must navigate a series of scripts and stereotypes that define not only how others relate to black women, but how black women relate to themselves.  In an attempt to summarize all of these discourses, we might say, Òthe ideology about Black women is  10  influenced by narratives about race (white dominance), about gender (nuclear family), [and] about sexuality (heterosexual reproduction)Ó (Richie 109); although, I have outlined them more specifically as the cult of true womanhood, the patriarchal agenda of black nationalism, and the Òtrap of loyaltyÓ inherent in the Òclassical black female script.Ó  Whether readers are aware of the historical and discursive forces behind them or not, these three narratives are prevalent in most of mainstream African American literature (whether as affirmation of or resistance to these narratives)Ñand they are precisely the racialized gender scripts Jones disrupts by creating transgressive unnatural narrative worlds.  Ursa and Eva uncomfortably inhabit, exaggerate, and actively subvert these racial narratives to draw attention to the scriptsÕ inherent, oppressive violence, and by the end of their stories, readers are aware of both their complicity in these discourses as well as the chaos and fragmentation that can occur when black women negotiate such constricted spaces of identity.    It is worth emphasizing, as well, that what these three scripts have in common is that they are produced, disseminated, and resisted at the level of language:  through colloquial lexicons, academic articles, literary representation, the written law, etc.  According to Carlyle Van Thompson, ÒAs significant as skin color and hair texture, language becomes a critical part of the system of racial categories and hierarchies established by social custom and lawÓ (11).  Van Thompson particularly points to the way that ÒÔproperÕ or standard English can position one closer to whitenessÓ (11), but this speaks to a larger consideration:  that narrative in all of its many forms constructs our social world and is the vehicle for relations of power and resistance.  It is with this concept in mind that I find JonesÕs novels so compelling.  As Jenkins states:  If, in fact, Ò[n]arrative is one of the ways in which identity, the ideological subject, is manufactured,Ó then it stands to reason that close reading of African American narrative  11  in particular might offer us insight into the ideological complexities of black subjectivity. (24) If we are looking to understand particularly the complexities of black subjectivity, then the challenging, complicated, and highly transgressive narrative techniques that Jones uses can give us radically transformed representations of black women in the post-civil rights moment, while also speaking to and reworking some of the major tenets of unnatural narratology itself.    As Gayl Jones has said, ÒWhen you tell a storyÉ youÕre talking about language, youÕre talking about politics and morality and economics and culture,Ó but Ò[y]ouÕre [also] talking about all your connections as a human beingÓ (Jones and Harper 693).  Throughout these two chapters, I hope to explore the human implications of the particular language, politics, morality, and culture that Jones has encoded within Corregidora and EvaÕs Man.  Chapter One will primarily expand on the triad of racial discourses described in this introduction, examining how both Ursa and Eva navigate marginalized spaces as black women and how they specifically use language to disrupt the narratives which mark their bodies and subjectivities.  Chapter Two takes a closer look at the institutions which both control these narratives and consume Ursa and Eva in the pursuit of maintaining systems of oppression.  Again, however, we must be careful not to read these protagonists as active victims, as they manipulate language and silence in order to subvert the institutional gaze of both the law and systems of reading and spectatorship.   Throughout this paper, I will attempt not to prescribe a singular reading for either text or map unnatural narratology onto the textsÑwhich, arguably, is a literary theory written by and about members of the white Euro-American majority and carries uncomfortable connotations in the term Òunnatural.Ó  Both a singular reading and a mapped theoretical reading would ultimately do a violence to JonesÕs work in the same way that singular constructs of racialized gender and  12  institutional systems do violence to Ursa and Eva.  Rather, I hope to provide my own personalÑand limitedÑaccess point for understanding both of these novels while acknowledging the validity of other readings and interpretations.  As Brian Richardson states, narratives, like JonesÕs that might be categorized as Òunnatural narratives,Ó Òfollow fluid, changing conventions and create new narratological patterns in each workÓ (qtd. in Alber and Heinze); and analyses of such narratives should also be read as fluid moments of meaning rather than crystalized structures or hegemonic expertise.  Most importantly, however, we must remember that beneath the layers of discourse and oppression, metaphor and narration, ultimately this project is about the human implications of Ursa and EvaÕs storiesÑas they speak, sing, and remain silent, these women make human connections with the reader and with other black women just like them who suffer, survive, and heal under the weight of racialized gender narratives.    13  Disrupting Racialized Gender Discourses    ÒÔ[G]ender,Õ like Ôrace,Õ is not given,Ó writes Hortense J. Spillers (ÒPeterÕs PansÓ 22); beyond skin pigmentation, beyond genitalia, the body is marked with what she calls the Òhieroglyphics of the fleshÓÑ meanings, values, and discourses which render the body and the flesh knowable, readable, and culturally appraised in any given context (ÒMamaÕs BabyÓ 206-7).  Many of the hieroglyphics of the flesh that Jones takes up in Corregidora and EvaÕs Man were introduced in pages previous, and they will be further explicated here.  If the body, Òin its material and abstract phaseÓ is, as Spillers states, Òa resource for metaphorÓ (ÒMamaÕs BabyÓ 205), then the signification of this metaphor within the creative and disruptive boundaries of the JonesÕs ÒunnaturalÓ narratives provide valuable access points for understanding the complexities of black female subjectivity in Ursa and EvaÕs particular contexts.  Narrative, as Jenkins suggests, has the power to ÒmanufactureÓ identity and ideology (24), and thus also becomes the tool through which Ursa and Eva disrupt the marginalizing hieroglyphics that define their existence as black women.    Just as blackness is not a fixed ontological state or even an empirically and scientifically defined category, all black women do not engage with their identities in monolithic ways.  Although Ursa and EvaÕs stories speak to one another and to many of the larger racialized gender discourses, Jones herself has been clear that these stories are in fact very different:  Òit [EvaÕs Man] sounds a lot like Corregidora, but itÕs not.  The woman of the story isnÕt the same kind of woman eitherÓ (Jones and Harper 701).  Primary discourses, ÒunnaturalÓ narrative techniques and the particularities of each character all speak to JonesÕs participation in a politics of difference rather than dangerous essentialism; as stated in an interview with Claudia C. Tate, Jones disrupts monolithic representations because she believes ÒitÕs important to be able to work  14  with a range of personalities, as well as a range of personalities within one personalityÓ (147).  This range of personalities needs to be heeded when comparing Corregidora and EvaÕs Man side by side, and it will dictate the way that I structure my forthcoming analysis.    JonesÕs debut novel tells the story of Ursa Corregidora, descended from a long line of women who Òmake generationsÓ in order to provide a literal body of evidence that testifies to the trauma of slavery.  Ursa, Mama, Gram, and Great-Gram perform a ritualized repetition of memory that attests to the atrocitiesÑincluding rape, incest, and forced prostitutionÑincurred at the hands of Corregidora, a Portuguese slave owner in Brazil, before slavery was abolished in 1888.  The novel begins when UrsaÕs first husband, Mutt Thomas, either ÒpushesÓ or watches Ursa ÒfallÓ down the stairs, resulting in a miscarriage and a hysterectomy that renders her incapable of Òmaking generations.Ó  From there, the narrative negotiates the competing memories and voices that dictate UrsaÕs existence as a Corregidora woman while she determines how to make the memories into a transformative recognition rather than a static repetition that subsumes her individuality and personal desire.   Great-Gram and GramÕs story of enduring sexual violence on the Corregidora plantation becomes the gravitational force in UrsaÕs lifeÑtheir trauma is the cultural meaning inscribed on her flesh, and the memories ritually repeated become her own, producing a narrative collision represented at the level of language.  Very early on in the novel, we are introduced, very explicitly, to the exact nature of this trauma:  ÒHe fucked his own whores and fathered his own breed.  They did the fucking, and had to bring him the money they made.  My grandmamma was his daughter, but he was fucking her tooÓ (Corregidora 9).  As this trauma is articulated and rearticulated by the multiple generations of women, dialogue tags fall away, and the reader becomes completely unclear of who is repeating this storyÑUrsa, Mama, Gram, or Great Gram.   15  It chaotically projects multiple voices into UrsaÕs first person narration, leading to a shared anxiety between the reader, who attempts to piece the dialogue together, and Ursa herself.  Critic Karla Holloway, who pays particular attention to the way narrative worlds speak to black female subjectivities in Moorings & Metaphors, Figures of Culture and Gender in Black WomenÕs Literature, notes that this chaotic collision of voicesÑthis polyphonyÑis often inherent in African American works Òthat claim the texts of spoken memory as their source and whose narrative strategy honors the cultural memories within the wordÓ (25).  In other words, in the articulation of Gram and Great GramÕs lived experience through the oral transmission of history, the ÒwordÓ itself becomes rooted in Òcultural memories,Ó and thus makes use of creative and transgressive Ònarrative strateg[ies]Ó to make sense of the multiple voices and myths at work in the spoken testimony to the Corregidora trauma.    The characters who exist outside of this traumaÕs gravitational force occasionally comment on this polyphony and fragmentation, which serves to voice the readerÕs concern and anxiety throughout the reading process.  For instance, UrsaÕs second husband, Tadpole, asks, ÒYou mixed up every which way, ainÕt you?Ó; he then goes on to say, ÒYou seem like you got a little bit of everything in you,Ó to which Ursa responds, ÒI didnÕt put it thereÓ (Corregidora 80).  The Òlittle bit of everythingÓ in Ursa is the collision of voices and time pulsing through her narration as she vividly remembers how Corregidora Òfucked his whores and fathered his own breedÓ (9), but importantly, Ursa also points to the fact that she ÒdidnÕt put it thereÓÑshe has been marked against her will by the memory of racialized, sexualized trauma, forced to relive a past that was never fully her own.  Importantly, then, we can see that the hieroglyphics of the fleshÑthe racialized gender discoursesÑtaken up in Corregidora are sourced both in the way Corregidora codes Gram and Great Gram in the initial trauma of racialized sexual violence and  16  in the way these women go on to encode a series of discourses and memories onto their children in order to keep the evidence of their trauma visible.    Scholars Marisa Parham, Avery Gordon, and Hershini Bhana Young give us a language with which to examine this collective memory through a concept interchangeably known as ÒhauntingÓ or Òrememory.Ó  As Parham states, Òhaunting names how we experience the pain of others or, even more specifically, how the pain of others shades our own subjectivitiesÓ (2).  Young, in Haunting Capital:  Memory, Text, and the Black Diasporic Body, also draws our attention to the way this haunting is felt physically, imprinting itself upon the body as well as the subject, describing the sensation of possessing as an experience Òthat is not yours yet that now belongs to youÓ as the physical droplets of Òsweat on the gold of your palmsÓ (85).  Sweat, itself, is a very prominent motif throughout the course of the novel, arising in Great GramÕs palms as she recounts Òthe same story over and over againÓ:  Òshe started rubbing my thighs with her hands, and I could feel the sweat on my legsÓ (Corregidora 11).  As the story inscribes itself in UrsaÕs memory and is replayed narratively for the reader, the sweat produced from the retelling simultaneously marks her legs, becoming a physical, bodily sign of the memory.  Finally, haunting, as Gordon describes it, Òdraws us affectively, sometimes against our will and always a bit magically, into the structure of feeling of reality we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as a transformative recognitionÓ (8).  As discussed above, UrsaÕs agency in the process of re-memory is complicated and fraught with tensionÑas she is often resentful of her conscripted memories and of previous generationsÕ demands (Corregidora 80)Ñbut more importantly, as will be discussed in more detail later, Ursa is the only one of the four women who is able to transform the haunting, to engage in an act of recognition but also direct that  17  change against the memory itself, rearticulating it as a synthesis of her past, present, and future in a way that allows her to heal.   Jones utilizes unnatural narrative practices in order to perform the haunting on the level of language, inviting her readers into UrsaÕs polyphonic existence through the act of reading itself.  As Carlyle Van Thompson notes, primarily the moments of rememory are signified by the italicized narration, which Òfunctions as UrsaÕs consciousness, as dreams, memories, interior monologues, and the storytelling of UrsaÕs great-grandmother, grandmother, and motherÓ (73).  Because Jones chooses to include not only the shared memory of Corregidora in these italicized moments, but also UrsaÕs own consciousness, personal memories, and interior monologues, she is demonstrating simultaneously the psychological fragmentation under the weight of haunting and also the way that Ursa resists the overwhelming influence of the collective by projecting her own individuality into the linguistic space marked out as CorregidoraÕs by the italicized portions at the beginning of the novel, which start as clearly marked boundaries between Corregidora memories and UrsaÕs own personal memories.  As the novel progresses, this clearly marked boundary blurs to the point where readers are unclear what the act of italicizing is meant to signify.    For instance, there are moments when she fades seamlessly into the fabric of her foremothersÕ haunting narration, such as when the prose transitions from Gram speaking to Ursa and then back again on page 172:  ÒHe raised me and then when I got big enough he started fucking me.  Seem like he raised me fucking me.  Yeah, Mama told me how in the old days he was just buying up women.Ó  In this italicized narration, we think that the description of Corregidora buying women and examining them on the auction block is Ursa recounting what her mother told her, but then Jones snaps us out of that knowledge by emphasizing GramÕs perspective:  ÒThatÕs  18  why he said he always liked my mama better than meÓ (172).  We know that Ursa never spoke to Corregidora, and we know the impossibility of him preferring Mama over her (two women he has never physically met), though previously we assumed Ursa was speaking.  Holloway might interpret moments like these in Corregidora by stating, ÒThe narrative structures in these works force the words within the texts to represent (re)memories in/of events and ideas that revise and multiply meaningsÓ (56), suggesting that the meaning of CorregidoraÕs sexualized influence over Gram is condensed and multiplied so that it stretches across time to be scripted onto UrsaÕs psyche itself.3  Because of the nature of this unconventional narrative style, the reader feels an increased anxiety concerning where the subjectivity of Ursa begins and ends in relation to her Grandmother, and we can probably assume that Ursa feels this same tension as these memories multiply in new ways.  However, there are other instances where Ursa violently asserts her own agency within the space for rememory, stating ÒI am Ursa Corregidora.  I have tears for eyes.  I was made to touch my past at an early ageÉ. Let no one pollute my music.  I will dig out their temples.  I will pluck out their eyesÓ (77).  Moments like this demonstrate the pain Ursa must feel from being Òmade to touchÓ her past since childhoodÑto be coerced into rememory to the point where her                                                 3 It is also worth noting that the way Jones represents rememory seems to align itself well with what unnatural narratologists like Brian Richardson have called Òmultiperson narrative,Ó where multiple characters engage in the act of narrating (67).  Although I will utilize this term later in this paper for its useful connotations with EvaÕs Man, the way that CorregidoraÕs multiplied narrative happens through the vehicle of memory and African American diasporic trauma, seems to transform the way that contemporary narratologists (who generally work with postmodern texts from the white majority) might relate to this literary term.  Does the trauma of slavery change the way that these voices overlap in the text, and does rememory create a form of community and oral history unique to African American communities in the way that it functions and is motivated?  Is Jones unique in the way she pushes the boundaries of contemporary narratology?  These questions go beyond the scope of this project, but are worth noting nonetheless.     19  own narration occasionally is so subsumed by it that she must explicitly describe who she is (ÒI am Ursa CorregidoraÓ) and threaten anyone who threatens her music with the possibility of violence.  This latter point speaks to how, as Amy S. Gottfried states, ÒFor Ursa, two ways out of her repetitive familial narrative are the blues song and her verbalized angerÓ (567).  Both are forms of speaking, of claiming her voice in relation to the other multiplied voices of her foremothersÕ and Corregidora himself; likewise, it speaks to a long tradition of how African American women engage with the blues as simultaneously a performative subversion and a moment of touching the personal self rather than Òtouch[ing the] past,Ó as Spillers states in ÒInterstices:  A Small Drama of WordsÓ:   In this instance of being-for-self, it does not matter that the vocalist is ÒentertainingÓ under American skies because the woman, in her particular and vivid thereness, is an unalterable and discrete moment of self-knowledge.  The singer is a good example of Ôdouble consciousnessÕ in action. (165) Throughout Corregidora, Ursa experiences moments of Òvivid therenessÓ and ÒunalterableÓ Òself-knowledgeÓ as she uses the blues to carve out a space for her own identity in relation to the audience and her foremothers, which is why she threatens to defend her music so violently, claiming she will Òdig out their templesÓ and Òpluck out their eyesÓ if someone Òpollute[s] my musicÓÑan act of pollution that would tarnish not only her voice but her own personal subjectivity.   Gottfried also uses the blues to speak to the unconventional and compelling force of Gayl Jones as a writer, focusing in on Corregidora as what Jones herself has described as a Òblues novel.Ó  It is true that the form mimics the blues in many instances, such as on page 67 when the narration states:   20  While mama be sleeping, the ole man he crawl into bed  While mama be sleeping, the ole man he crawl into bed  When mama have wake up, he shaking his nasty ole head  DonÕt come here to my house, donÕt come here to my house I said.  Here the rhythm and repetition follows the patterns of a blues song, and is a way for Ursa to engage in an act of rememory in her own, personalized manner.  However, Gottfried notes that, Ò[i]t is no coincidence that Ursa can voice her desire through the blues,Ó for the novelÕs form itself speaks to the blues because Òblues talks about the simultaneity of good and badÉ Blues acknowledges all different kinds of feelings at onceÓ (561).  This pairing of good and bad is present in how Jones challenges positive race representations (Gottfried 569) and makes her readers question many of the artificial binaries that have traditionally delineated African American womenÕs lives:  sexual desire/respectability, trauma/healing, individual/collective memory, etc.  Jones writes up against the boundaries of stereotype and identity and pushes her readers to hold competing concepts in the palm of their hands, appreciating the tension as a unified whole as she Òsings the bluesÓ in the way she constructs her unconventional narrative worlds.  One of these complicated tensions within Corregidora speaks to the way that haunting is not isolated in UrsaÕs consciousness; rather, just as Gordon emphasizes that ghosts Òproduce material effectsÓ (17), Corregidora emphasizes the physical and interpersonal consequences of that which is passed down via rememory.  Particularly, Ursa learns to conflate pleasure and pain, or at the very least recognize the way they are constantly intermingled, especially within the context of slavery.  Spillers suggests that all facets of sexualityÑÒreproduction,Ó Òmotherhood,Ó Òpleasure,Ó and ÒdesireÓÑare Òall thrown into crisisÓ when experienced in captivity; in fact, she  21  questions Òwhether or not ÔpleasureÕ is possible at all under the conditionsÉ [of] non-freedomÓ (ÒMamaÕs BabyÓ 221).  The tension between these seemingly binary opposites is something never fully articulated by Gram or Great GramÑwho experienced Corregidora first-handÑbut the presence of pleasure and desire within the context of pain seems to be the ghost in the haunting, the Òexclusio[n] and invisibilit[y]Ó that makes this memory a Òghost stor[y]Ó (Gordon 17).  In fact, the possibility of desireÑor even loveÑinhabiting the same space as sexual violence is so threatening to the Corregidora women that it is sourced as the reason why they refuse to welcome UrsaÕs father into the family; as Mama states:  I think what really made them dislike Martin was because he had the nerve to ask them what I never had the nerve to askÉ How much was hate for Corregidora and how much was love. (131) Gram and Great Gram experience this possibility as a perversion, as something that perhaps undoes their trauma; though throughout Corregidora, Jones complicates our understanding of sexual violence, stated in Christina SharpeÕs text as a necessarily deconstructed binary:  Ò[T]here seems to be a growing understanding, working itself out especially in Corregidora, of what is required in order to be genuinely tenderÉ perhaps brutality enables one to recognize what tenderness isÓ (65). This deconstructed binary is just as complicated as anything else within the novel:  pleasure and pain existing in the same intimate space can be transformative and can also be highly problematic by participating in the Òtrap of loyaltyÓ that cause black women to remain in abusive relationships with black men (Richie 36).  In the transformative moments which allow Ursa to express her own desire, the narrative emphasizes how she is engaging in an act of resistance similar to her violent assertion of her identity discussed earlier:   22  What do they say about pleasure mixed in the pain?  ThatÕs the way it always was with him.  The pleasure somehow greater than the pain.  My voice screaming for him to take me.  And when he would, IÕd draw him down into the bottom of my eyes.  They watched me.  I felt as if they could see my feelings somewhere in the bottom of my eyes. (50-1) In this moment where Ursa explicitly expresses her desire in the presence of pain, she feels the scrutiny of the undisclosed Òthey.Ó  We might assume that this ÒtheyÓ is in fact the critical gaze of her foremothers, who have themselves rejected the expression of desireÑwhose only engagement with their own sexualities is to Òmake generationsÓ or visible, bodily testimonies to their subjugation on the Corregidora plantation.   Through Ursa, Jones makes us question the artificial separation of these two physical experiences:  that experiencing traumatic violence or pain prevents one from desiring or even loving oneÕs abuser, and that acknowledging that love or desire makes that violence or pain any less traumatic.  This is a paradox which UrsaÕs foremothers are never able to fully articulate, however.  Sexual intimacy that is both violent and pleasurable thus becomes the ghost in the story of Corregidora, an entity or reality never acknowledged as existingÑand Ursa attempts throughout the novel to find a way to not deny or disavow her individual intimate feelings when it comes into contact with the collective trauma of her oral history.   However, the novel does not suggest that conflating pleasure and pain is always the path to tenderness or love; rather, Corregidora simultaneously suggests the enduring pain of the haunting can result in new traumatic and oppressive intimate memories.  For instance, Ursa comes to expect that she is obligated to feel pain, that her own comfort is devalued within an intimate space.  While she has sex with her second husband, Tadpole, her body seems to engage in the rememory of pleasure/pain in a way that is not as agential as the previous example:  ÒDoes  23  it hurt?Ó ÒYes, a little.Ó ÒDid they say you could do it?Ó ÒYes, we can do it.Ó ÒHow does it feel now?Ó ÒGo onÓ (49).  In this moment, Ursa, like her foremothers, is incapable of articulating her pleasure, if that pleasure even exists.  Furthermore, her decision to subject herself could be linked to her experience of her foremothersÕ stories, which is supported by the many slippages in the text between her husbands and Corregidora himself.  Tamara Lea Spira, for instance, points to the phrase, ÒWhat do you mean you donÕt know me?  I was in your hole before he even knew you had oneÓ (Corregidora 75) as Òparticularly disturbing because the voice that starts out as Mutt [UrsaÕs first husband] ends up being Corregidora.  This slippage happens continually as CorregidoraÕs specter works to (re)assert that Ursa is ÔhisÕÓ (123-4).  By aligning Tadpole and Mutt with Corregidora, Jones problematizes the deconstructed binary of pleasure/pain, suggesting that sexual violence is just as present in UrsaÕs present as it is in her foremothersÕ past as the haunting specter of Corregidora creates very real and material effects in UrsaÕs life.   All of these examples demonstrate the complex nature of agency within the context of haunting, and JonesÕs text emphasizes the need for Ursa to carve out these transformative spaces while her foremothers remain stagnant, caught in the traumaÕs gravitational force.  As Holloway states, Ò(re)membrance is activation in the face of stasis, a restoration of fluidity, translucence, and movement to the traditions of memory that become the subjects of these worksÓ (68).  Mama becomes the primary example that exemplifies how the women before Ursa privilege stasis rather than activation:  ÒShe sees [rememory] not as an accumulative process but more like Great Gram does, as a fixed litany that cannot be added to/altered in any wayÓ (Haunting Capital 111).  As a result, Mama becomes subsumed by the original trauma rather than using rememory as a tool towards Òtransformative recognitionÓ (Gordon 8), and it prevents her from healing, moving forward, or staking her own claim of individual agency in the process of haunting.  In contrast,  24  Ursa responds with resistance, viewing (re)membrance as activation or accumulationÑincorporating her own voice and her own personal traumas into the italicized narration while using the blues to translate these experiences into expression:  ÒThey squeezed Corregidora into me, and I sung back in returnÓ (103).  As Young states, ÒMamaÕs pain, her inability to speak her own memories, and her jealous guarding of her own injuries demonstrate her misunderstanding of collective memoryÓ (Haunting Capital 111), which means that Ursa engages with collective memory in a much more positive wayÑshe is able to resist the scripts placed on her body and her subjectivity by Corregidora and her foremothersÕ, navigating her liminal space with the help of the blues. However, Jones also throws our understanding of ÒhealingÓ or even Òmoving forwardÓ into crisis in the way she ends the novel.  Most readers would assume that these should be strived forÑthat moving beyond the stasis of the traumatic past, or moving from silence and oppression to a truly vocal moment of Òvivid therenessÓ and Òself-knowledgeÓ (ÒIntersticesÓ 165) is the dynamic turn that must be learned by the protagonist before the last page of the narrative.  However, as Donia Elizabeth Allen notes, Jones refuses her readers an easily digestible Òmoral lessonÓ in the final scene of Corregidora:  The final sex act is one that renders Ursa unable to speak or sing, both of which are extremely important to her in terms of bearing witness to her personal history and to that of her ancestorsÉ In order to reconcile with Mutt does she give up her ability to speak or sing?... The final ritualized dialogue raises more questions than it answers and clearly, rather than resolving the novel neatly, Jones wants us to continue grappling with the ambiguities her characters have throughout the novel. (265)  25  Just as the ÒunnaturalÓ narrative style resists easily digestible meanings, just as the layers of multiplicity throw the reader into disquiet, the way Jones closes the novel undermines a clear trajectory through UrsaÕs character development, forcing us to grapple with competing racialized gender discourses that have scripted African American female subjectivities throughout history in the very localized and particular blues narrative of Ursa Corregidora.   Corregidora, JonesÕs debut novel, engages with unnatural narrative techniques as it depicts the process of haunting, demonstrating the scripting forces in UrsaÕs life:  her body and her subjectivity are encoded by Corregidora and her foremothers, which has material effects in the way that she experiences intimacy with the two men in her life.  JonesÕs second novel, EvaÕs Man seems to be an extension as well as a variation on Corregidora both in the way she uses/challenges ÒunnaturalÓ narrative and how she engages with the three racial discourses described in the introduction to this project.  Jones distinguishes EvaÕs Man as having different ÒmovementÓ and a different Òway of telling,Ó as well as describing it as a Òhorror storyÓ whose structure differs from the blues ritual of Corregidora (Jones and Harper 701).  In many ways, Jones has said that she doesnÕt Òknow what it is,Ó suggesting that the ÒunnaturalÓ narrative in EvaÕs Man takes up severely different elements than her firstÑ and more easily articulatedÑnovel does (Jones and Harper 701). Through first-person narration, EvaÕs Man details the story of Eva Medina Canada, a black woman convicted of killing and orally castrating a black man named Davis Carter after engaging in a series of sexual interactions with him in a hotel room.  Rather than giving the reader a linear progression through the events that lead to this event, however, EvaÕs Man jumps through time to collide previous events from EvaÕs childhood, laying every moment of sexual abuse on what is essentially the same plane as the main ÒplotÓ of the narrative.  Throughout the  26  course of the novel, we gain access to her memories of her parentsÕ tumultuous marriage, her childhood introduction to sexuality, and the many abusive relationships she enduresÑincluding Tyrone (her motherÕs extra-marital lover), Moses Tripp (a man she meets at a bar), Alfonso (her cousin), James ÒHawkÓ Hunn (her abusive husband), and Davis Carter (the lover she kills and castrates).   Structurally, the novel can be confusing to readers, disrupting traditional tropes of plot, dialogue, and reliability:   Past and present, the cerebral and visceral, even sanity and madness collide and, to some extent, emulsify in ways that stymie coherence, order, structure, and the ability to distinguish between varied events. (Melancon 140)  This incoherence does seem to have a progression to it, and by the end of the novel nearly all dialogue drops away, replaced instead by narration that seems to parrot and collapse previous events and voices, demonstrating the way that Eva internalizes and reacts to them.  EvaÕs Man is thus much more resistant to the act of reading, and the relationship that the reader has with the text is much more antagonistic and problematic, as will be discussed more in Chapter Two.  Unlike Corregidora, which roots the ÒunnaturalÓ narrative in the process of haunting or rememory, EvaÕs Man seems to have a different purpose for the avant-garde narrative style entirely, which is highly dependent on the racial discourses with which Jones is concerned.    From the very first chapter, Eva appears constrained within the narratives of racialized gender and sexuality discussed in the exposition of this paper.  Her body becomes a text:  scripted by centuries of identity formation dialectics dictated by the white majority and the patriarchal racial uplift movements.  Most importantly, however, EvaÕs Man demonstrates how the people in EvaÕs lifeÑparticularly the menÑread and misread these hieroglyphics of her  27  flesh, misinterpreting signs and body language in ways that conform to collective stereotypes of African American women.  For instance, DavisÕs first conversation with Eva illuminates the degree to which he misreads her body without questioning the validity of the scripts he sees and marks there; he misinterprets the fact that she is alone in a club as an invitation for a sexual partner, stating, ÒYou a hard woman, too, ainÕt you.  I know you got yourself startedÓ (EvaÕs Man 8).  The sexual connotations to this dialogue elicit a paradoxical response from Eva, by first narrating the violent reality of her sexual initiationÑÒI was thinking of a boy with a dirty popsicle stick digging up in my pussyÓÑand then by replying instead, ÒI got started like everyone else doesÉ I opened my legs.  My mother said after youÕve done it the first time, you wonÕt be satisfied till you done it againÓ (EvaÕs Man 8).  Within this latter quote, we see a multitude of things happening:  Eva renders her first sexual experience banal (ÒI opened my legsÓ) and aligned with the collective majority (Òlike everyone else doesÓ); she privileges a script handed down to her by her mother rather than her own personal interpretation of her sexuality (ÒMy mother saidÓ); and she entangles what might be considered a stereotypical definition of black female sexualityÑthe insatiable JezebelÑwith a very real reality of pleasure leading women to repeat sexual experiences (Òafter youÕve done it the first time, you wonÕt be satisfied till you done it againÓ).   Davis, of course, does not take the time to dive into the multiple layers of meaning here, and instead sees this response as a confirmation of his own bias.  As a result, the hieroglyphics marking EvaÕs fleshÑdetermined simultaneously by the definition of black female sexuality in contrast to concepts of whiteness, as well as the sexual subjugation black women are expected to experience at the hands of black menÑbecome a performance that rewrites her own interpretation of her sexuality.  Although Eva knows that her initialization into sexuality is  28  violent (Òdirty popsicle stick digging up into my pussyÓ), she performs it as her mother and Davis expect her to as a black woman; she got ÒstartedÓ in the neutral opening of legs and became sexually ÒinsatiableÓ in a way that justifies DavisÕs advances.  Although Eva herself attempts to negotiate these competing narratives in a way similar to Ursa negotiating the conflated nature of pleasure/pain, those around her misread these negotiations as confirmations of racialized gender stereotypes and grand narratives of collective identity.  If Eva understands the intermingled nature of sexual agency and victimization in relation to her mother, we can see how her motherÕs marriage becomes one of the central points of analysis in most scholarly interventions.  Probably the most quoted moment occurs after John, EvaÕs father, learns of what he interprets as his wifeÕs own ÒunbridledÓ sexuality: Act like a whore, IÕm gonna fuck you like a whore.  You act like a whore, IÕm gonna fuck you like a whore.Ó  He kept saying that over and over.  I was so scared.  I kept feeling that after he tore all her clothes off, and there wasnÕt any more to tear, heÕd start tearing her flesh. (EvaÕs Man 37)   Because of her stigmatized promiscuityÑand thus her perceived culpability in her own sexual abuseÑEvaÕs mother, Marie, is denied the status of the Òdeserving victimÓ we often see in media today:  the quintessential innocent, white, middle-class woman who embodies the perfect victim for sexual assault advocate support (Richie 24).  The deserving victim is the uncomplicated, Òeasily understood by mainstream societyÓ victim (Richie 24), and thus black women like Marie and EvaÑwho are not only perceived to be Òasking for itÓ but who also internalize and enact constructs of unbridled, deviant sexualityÑare rejected from this narrow construction of victimhood.  This partially explains why JohnÕs violence is directed at Marie rather than her lover, Tyrone, for, as Carol Margaret Davison rightly notes, ÒEvaÕs father and his society regard  29  women as naturally sexually promiscuous,Ó just as Davis and the other men in the novel regard Eva (396-7, emphasis original).  However, this act also serves, Òthrough sexuality, virility, and sexual dominationÉ to display masculine strength, or a semblance of itÓ (Melancon 147).  Marie, then, like her daughter, falls victim to multiple narratives about her sexuality which exist in order to support identity structures opposite to herself.    How, then, does Eva manage to disrupt these oppressive narratives of racialized gender (violence) that seem to permeate every instance of her life in the first chapters?  How does she work to disrupt the white perspective (debased sexual agency), the black masculine perspective (object for display of male control), and the reactionary classical black female script (contained sexuality in the name of respectability, which we rarely see as a feasible option in EvaÕs Man)?  The answer is one part ÒunnaturalÓ literary narrative and one part sexual transgression of these three racialized gender narratives.4  Throughout the novel, Eva seems to fixate on the figure of the queen bee, a woman who seems to kill her sexual partnersÑunconsciously and via natural causesÑbut is still found to be irresistible to men (EvaÕs Man 17).  During the passages describing EvaÕs childhood, the adult women in her life, Marie and Miss Billie, tell Eva of this woman, who we are told is a real, embodied person; yet throughout the novel, the queen bee collapses with Eva to the point where we are unsure if the queen bee is literal, figurative,                                                 4 Again, I must pause to acknowledge the problematic connotations for ÒunnaturalÓ narrative style, which has heightened consequences when discussing an African American female protagonist whose sexual identity has been described by criticsÑsuch as Melancon and JenkinsÑas highly ÒtransgressiveÓ (again a term that should not be interpreted as negative), as well as a protagonist who is transgressive or in the eyes of the law because of the way she murders Davis and ÒdesecratesÓ his body.  I reference unnatural narratology repeatedly throughout this project simply because it is a useful mooring point for discussing narratives which so disrupt the traditional conventions of what reading prose feels like.  However as my readers might notice, I make a point to always mark this term with quotations marks as a way to note that I do not intend for any connotative slippages (even though I am sure they will occur), and I often privilege African American critics like Karla Holloway rather than Brian Richardson or Jan Alber ager Heinze.    30  separate from EvaÕs consciousness, or collided with her self.  This uncertainty and conflation of these two characters or voices lends itself to HollowayÕs description of ÒtranslucenceÓ in African American narratives, which is a quality that Òcomplicates the identities of tellers of the stories.  The boundaries between narrative voices and dialogue become obscure, merging one into the otherÓ (59-60) in a way that Òencourages the shimmering of [the textÕs] metaphorical layersÓ (55-6).  In other words, by ambiguously combining the queen bee with Eva to the point where Òthe queen bee functions as a double for Eva in the narrativeÓ (Jenkins 173), the unnatural narrative is able to explore and transgress the three racialized gender narratives wrapped up in the threatening concept of the queen bee, allowing readers to grasp more completely the way these constructs can collapse into a single subjectivity.   In order to understand just how the translucent narrative allows for the queen bee to be such a radical vehicle for Eva, first we must return to and understand the conventions surrounding this literal/figurative character.  When EvaÕs mother discusses the queen bee, she says Òshe would be more scared to be the queen bee than to be any of the men.  ÔSupposed you really loved somebody,Õ Mama said.  ÔYouÕd be scared to love himÓ (EvaÕs Man 41).  This moment is quite telling in terms of the conventional direction of violent power in gendered relationships.  Marie is accustomed to being the victim in her own marriageÑas we see in the previous scene of spousal rapeÑbut the position of perpetrator is uncomfortable; it is traditionally reserved for men like her husband, who Òwield masculine authority and subjectivity in relation to women in compensatory and systematic waysÓ (Melancon 21).  MarieÕs description of such a relationship also genders her position, for rather than the queen bee physically using and abusing her men sexually, it is love that seems to kill themÑas if the actual position of ÒperpetratorÓ in the male sense is impossible for women to inhabit fully, or to use JenkinsÕs  31  words, ÒWomen are expected to be passive recipients of male desire/violence; the possibility that a woman could inflict her own violent desire on a man thus verges on the conceptually incredibleÓ (162).   We later see Jones very strategically reify this claim in the way she genders the queen beeÕs violence, as well as the way violence is directed against the queen bee herself.  When attempting to explain masculine sexuality to a young Eva, the women in the novel describe men as bees who ÒstingÓ their women, which provides a way to interpret the metaphor of the queen ÒbeeÓ:  ÒÔGot to get stung by the bee before they can see.Õ / ÔMama, where does the bee sting?Õ / ÔYour heart,Õ Mama says. / ÔDown in your draws,Õ says Miss BillieÓ (EvaÕs Man 139).  In other words, men direct their violence simultaneously through love and through aggressive sexuality (Òyour heartÓ and Òdown in your drawsÓ), but the queen bee only has access to violent love rather than violent sexuality.  Therefore, the queen bee is a threateningÑor even could be read as a castratingÑwoman who partially reverses the direction of violent sexual power within gendered relationships but is still constrained within this dynamic due to her gendered script for relationships.  Rather than being stung by the bee, she is the bee who kills her victims through love, rather than masculine physical abuse.  However, eventually the queen bee succumbs to the original directionality of intimate violence, as Jenkins notes:  ÒThe character of the queen bee, supposedly the embodiment of dangerous female desire, ultimately succumbs to this logic [of passivity] as well, surrendering her own life rather than risk the life of a man she actually lovesÓ (162).  As will be discussed later, this is the primary difference between the queen bee and Eva; while one implodes to protect a man she loves, the other directs that violence outward in order to protect herself.   32  However, we should also turn our attention to the method of this killing, as it also points to a reversal and later conflation of directed power.  When Eva describes the queen bee to Davis, he replies, ÒShe mustÕve sucked them hollow.  ThatÕs why they died.  Cause they had nothing leftÓ (EvaÕs Man 74, emphasis original).  In Òsucking them hollow,Ó the queen bee is consuming them both orally and sexually, a tension already set in place in the way Davis combines sex and oral consumption of food early in the novel:  ÒWhen the vinegar touches the egg it smells likeÉ a womanÕs smellÓ (EvaÕs Man 18).  However, because Eva is ambiguously connected to the queen bee, the direction of power in the sexual Òsucking them hollowÓ images becomes equally ambiguous:  ÒÔLetÕs play,Õ he asks. / The sweet milk in the queen beeÕs breasts has turned to bloodÓ (EvaÕs Man 132).  In this moment, which is singled out rhetorically by placing it in a chapter by itself, Jones draws attention to the way the queen beeÑan image of a hyper-powerful, hypersexual womanÑis simultaneously subjugated by male domination and sexual aggression, further emphasized by earlier lines such as, ÒA man sucking the milk from her breasts.  He is sucking bloodÓ (EvaÕs Man 131).   Critic Megan Sweeney brought EvaÕs Man into a reading group with incarcerated women, with the hypothesis that such women would identify with Eva in a way that bourgeois readers may not, and the findings during the subsequent discussions lead to fascinating interpretations of some of the imagery, such as the breast-blood imagery.  For instance, when asked about this section, one woman answered, ÒTo me it was like her life, that [Davis Carter] was just sucking the life from herÓ (461).  It is Davis, then, who sucks Eva hollow, and it is the set of racial narratives that tell Eva to allow him to do it.  ÒOn the toilet throne, [Eva is] a queen beeÓÑa woman victimized by men but interpreted through conflicting racialized gender narratives to be the one in power, the one enacting her unbridled sexual agency.  And in order to  33  maintain a politics of respectability and support the black men in her life, she is expected to accept this victimization without complaint.     However, in killing, orally castrating, and then pleasuring herself with DavisÕs body, Eva disrupts the conventional forces of racialized gender and transforms the constrained gendering of the queen bee into an externalization of violence rather than a passive internalization of it.  In so doing, Eva Òflouts both black nationalist and many feminist definitions of victimization and resistanceÓ (Sweeney 469).  The murder sceneÑwhich serves as the climax of sorts, considering the lack of linear progressionÑis rife with images of sexual, oral consumption as she subverts the traditional direction of sexual violence onto DavisÕs body:  ÒI opened his trousers and played with his penis.  My mouth, my teeth, my tongue went inside his trousers.  I raised blood, slime from cabbage, blood sausage.  Blood from an appleÓ (EvaÕs Man 128).  Like the queen beeÑand like Davis before his deathÑEva sucks the blood from him, Òa milkweed full of bloodÓ (EvaÕs Man 128).  This act, therefore, works as a disruption of racialized gender narratives not only because of the sexual transgression of conventional power dynamics, but also because we are able to recognize the act of sucking Davis hollow as a moment of translucence that engages with the Òshimmering metaphorÓ of the queen bee (Jenkins 68).  EvaÕs translucent narrative breaks down the notion of a stable distinction between Eva and the queen bee, allowing us to interrogate the resultant Òpolyphony of discourses within an individualÓ (Richardson 136).  Only once we understand how the queen bee is subjugated (i.e. racialized gender constructs normalize the violent taking of black womenÕs bodies/life forces) can we understand how Eva later disrupts these conventions to become the unchallenged vision of a castrating woman capable of sucking a man hollow.   34  Through these many layers of metaphor and meaning, through the negotiation between voices both individual and collective, Corregidora and EvaÕs Man both construct transgressive narrative worlds that challenge racialized gender discourses that mark Ursa and EvaÕs subjectivities with cultural meaning.  UrsaÕs body, as a Òresource for metaphorÓ (ÒMamaÕs BabyÓ 205) becomes a witness to the traumatic sexual violence of slavery, and through that process she learns to collapse the binary between pleasure and pain, love and hate in a way that is ghosted in the stories passed down to her by her foremothers.  Ursa uses both the blues and ÒunnaturalÓ narration to assert her own subject position within the collective memory that threatens to subsume those who came before, thus engaging in an act of resistance and transformation.  EvaÕs body is marked in way that more directly engages tropes of insatiable sexuality the trap of loyalty produced by centuries of discourse, but she likewise uses ÒunnaturalÓ narration to render these narratives absurd and resist violently through the metaphor of the queen bee.  Taken together, these two texts speak to the way that Jones and other black women writers Òmake linguistic rituals in recursive, metaphoric layers that structure meaning and voice into a complex that eventually implicates the primal, mythic, and female community as its sourceÓ (Holloway 35).  Jones, however, distinguishes herself from many other black women writers by also challenging the way the female community can inscribe additional layers of oppression, marked on the bodies of Ursa and Eva as SpillersÕ hieroglyphics of the flesh.        35  Subverting the Institutional Gaze  The racialized gender scripts Ursa and Eva navigate and resist in JonesÕs texts take on added significance as they become institutionalized in law, in economics, in psychology, and in the act of reading or consuming literature itself.  Corregidora and EvaÕs Man both interrogate the institutional gaze throughout their pages, demonstrating how racial oppression of centuries past lingers through the present, lurking in systems that protect or service only a portion of the American populace.  Because these institutionalized discourses often appear invisible, masquerading as common sense or tradition, Corregidora and EvaÕs Man resort to radical reinterpretation, laying bare these systems by representing them in shocking new ways.  Ultimately, these two texts disrupt what is considered ÒnormalÓ within the intersection of the institutional gaze and black women, pointing to the way that systemic oppression was not and still has not been abolished alongside slavery or the subsequent civil rights crusades.   As an introductory example to get a taste of what I mean when I say Òthe intersection of institutional systems and racialized gender,Ó it might be helpful to turn to systems of economics:  currency, commodification, neoliberal exploitation, etc.  In her analysis of Corregidora, for instance, Hershini Bhana Young points to the lingering entanglement of race and economics in the form of the black slave as property and capital:  The haunted nature of the slave as commodity assumes vast political importance as it enables us to speak about the affective imprints of violence, injury, and grief that continue to permeate the worlds we live in. (Haunting Capital 40)   Likewise, bell hooks discusses the commodification of Otherness thoroughly in Black Looks, emphasizing that race and ethnicity continues to be a Òresource for pleasureÓ and an Òalternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power- 36  over in intimate relations with the OtherÓ (23, emphasis added).  The way that the black body is commodified and objectified renders it consumable and exploitable in ways that hearken back to chattel era slavery, but have faded to the background in the post Civil Rights era.  Corregidora takes up this intersection head on, pointing to the repeated recoding of the female genitalia as CorregidoraÕs Ògold pussyÓ  (124), and how this connection survives the abolition of slavery through MuttÕs verbal violence against Ursa:  ÒPiece a ass for sale.  I got me a piece a ass for saleÓ (159).  Jones, then, represents the violence of such economic commodification in UrsaÕs intimate life, demonstrating how black women often must navigate economic systems of power in their day-to-day lives, while also pointing to how this intersection simultaneously happens and can be disrupted at the level of language.   Again, as I move into the analysis in this chapter, I feel obligated to pause to discuss the structure of the pages to follow.  Similar to the differences between the two texts described in the previous chapter, we must not conflate these two texts when discussing the institutional consumption and maintenance of racialized gender discourses:  the legal, economic, and literary institutions at play within each text differ significantly as well.  Because of the nature of the trauma in Corregidora, JonesÕs first novel is more concerned with the haunting presence of slavery as an institutionÑprimarily in the conflation of sex(uality) and property and the gendered nature of access to legal operations and protections in a heteropatriarchal system constructed and maintained by a white majority.  EvaÕs Man explores more thoroughly the intersection of racial discourses and the common conception of criminalityÑof how we describe and relate to acts of violence when they are either directed against the black female body or when it is a black woman who reverses this directionality and asserts herself violently against the men in her life.  Both texts concern themselves with the gaze of the reader and the way literary  37  texts themselves are institutionalized and entrenched in systems of power; however, EvaÕs Man yet again seems to be a more radical interpretation of this relationship as it purposefully disrupts the reading process and withholds parts of the story.  Even with their differences, both of JonesÕs novels provide challenging alternatives to common conceptions of institutionalized racism and sexism, providing transformative spaces for her characters to resist the lingering effects of systems designed to enslave rather than liberate them.    Now let us return to the first example from the beginning of this chapter in order to explore it more thoroughly.  In Corregidora, Ursa is not only haunted by her foremothersÕ experience of sexual trauma, but she is also haunted by the legal forces which bolstered a system of enslavement and forced labor.  As Spillers states, Òthe captive female body locates precisely a moment of converging political and social vectors that mark the flesh as a prime commodity of exchangeÓ (ÒMamaÕs BabyÓ 220), and throughout UrsaÕs narration, the female body continues to be marked as a commodity of exchange because of the lingering effects of these sociopolitical vectors.  The memory of Corregidora is deeply entrenched in the economic, for the trauma sustained by Gram and Great Gram has just as much to do with sexual violence as it does with commodification:  He didnÕt send nothing but the rich mens in there to me, cause he said I was his little gold pussy, his little gold piece, and it didnÕt take some of them old rich mens no time, and then I still be fresh for him. (Corregidora 124) Tamara Lea Spira suggests this intersection of the sexual and the economic creates a Òlaw of value that says Ôgold [valuable] pussyÕ; a womanÕs vagina equals her economic value and the economic value equals her essenceÓ (120).  In other words, the economic value is the only signifier that Corregidora values in Gram and Great GramÑtheir genitalia-as-capital comes to  38  define these women as the privileged hieroglyphics of the flesh.  Stephanie Li goes on to argue that the women internalize this redefinition of the body, and they transmit to each new generation that the womb is the Òprimary site of female valueÓ (qtd. in Spira 120-1), they themselves becoming integral to the maintenance of this racialized gender discourse due to the trauma they sustain as forced sexual labor on the Corregidora plantation.   As this interpretation of female worth becomes internalized in the newest generation, we see how UrsaÕs interactions with the men in her lifeÑMutt and TadpoleÑoften take a similar trajectory, demonstrating the lingering entanglement of the female body with economic capital.  While Mutt considers himself separate from the histories that came beforeÑÒwhichever way you look at it, we ainÕt themÓÑUrsa consistently collapses that distinction, saying Òit was almost as if I wasÓ (Corregidora 151); however, Mutt becomes the primary agent of these surviving economic narratives, often descending into jealous rages that linguistically align Ursa with the prostitution her foremothersÕ survived:  ÒOne a yÕall wont to bid for her? Piece a ass for sale.  I got me a piece a ass for sale.  ThatÕs what yÕall wont, ainÕt it?  Piece a assÓ (Corregidora 159).  In this moment, the stage Ursa stands on becomes a metaphorical auction block, collapsing time and relegating Ursa to a sexualized commodity to be bid onÑan Òobject for consumption and enjoymentÓ (Spira 121).  This moment, in a narrative sense, is a metaphorical repetition, as Mutt and Ursa repeat actions of a distant past, which speaks to the haunted nature of CorregidoraÕs narration.  Karla Holloway gives us a useful way of interpreting how repetition might be a vehicle for haunting in African American literature, stating:  Both place and time are implicated inÉ recursion and repetition because displacement is the thematic result of repetition.  It moves the text away from itself and the reader away from a subjective/objective understanding of itÉ Instead, the text becomes circular, its  39  referentiality no longer given through the perceived, linear arrangement of words. (78, emphasis original) Thus we can see how Ursa is incredibly accurate when she says Òit was almost as if [she] wasÓ her foremothers (Corregidora 151), for MuttÕs language results in UrsaÕs subjectivity being displaced by theirs in the mind of the reader, as the auction block becomes a circular repetition, conjuring up images from Gram and Great GramÕs past as enslaved economic capital.    However, Young helps us to conceptualize how, as always, JonesÕs protagonists are able to subvert common racial discourses such as the commodification of Otherness, emphasizing that the only actual exchange of money in relation to Ursa happens because of the blues:  ÒUrsa, however, by reiterating that she is paid for singing the blues that provides her with a public forum for telling ÔherÕ story, subverts the commodification of the black body on the auction blockÓ (Haunting Capital 105).  It is important to explore why Jones chooses the blues as the vehicle through which Ursa undermines her own commodification, for sexual objectification, as Amy S. Gottfried notes, Ònot only sexually constrains but also silencesÓ (567).  Through the blues, Ursa refuses this silence and sings back in return, claiming her voice, her subjectivity, and her oral history.  Furthermore, the fact Ursa is paid for becoming the Òprimary subject of her own inventionÓ (ÒIntersticesÓ 167) through her music means that she is able to effectively subvert economic power in relation to black womenÕs bodies:  rather than being paid for her body as object, she is paid for the entangled individual and communal oral history she delivers in the highly personal performance of the blues.  Thus, just as Ursa is able to carve out a space for her subjectivity in relation to the italicized narration of rememory, she is also able to assert her own subjectivity and privilege her own voice in the realm of the economic, which in turn disrupts the privilege on the female sex as the only definition of the black womanÕs Òessence.Ó   40   This complicated entanglement of internalization and resistance also runs throughout the most prominent theme within the text:  the way rememory functions as an oral and physical resistance to the erasure written history enacts on African American communities.  Ursa and her foremothersÕ charge to Òmake generationsÓ is entrenched in oral historyÑin providing an alternative text as evidence of the atrocities sustained while Gram and Great Gram were held in captivity.  The oral history passed down through the generations is clearly defined in relation to the void produced in the written historiography maintained by the white majority:  ÒShe said when they did away with slavery down there [in Brazil] they burned all the slavery papers so it would be like they never had itÓ (Corregidora 9).  Rememory itself is, as Young states, Òa collectiveÉ repertoire of thought-pictures perpetuated and passed down through active political engagement,Ó which Òalways exists in relation to other discourses of history, Ôthat highly functional fantasy of the west,Õ and the lawÓ (Haunting Capital 112).  Linguistically, then, the way the story multiplies, the way it folds in and out of different voices and becomes a series of repeated passages and images emphasizes the organic and circular nature of rememoryÑof the way that it stands in contrast to the Òfantasy of the westÓ which privileges linear accounts of history fixed in progression narratives and documented in written texts rather than oral tradition or physical bodies.  The Corregidora women thus subvert the western conception of history and the law, reproducing bodies that attest to the crimes of said Western system and orally transmitting a translucent narrative that serves to disrupt the erasure the Brazil government enacted after slavery was abolished.    However, alongside this resistance, many scholars and many of the characters within Corregidora itself have complicated our understanding of rememory, suggesting that perhaps it becomes its own rigid law in the way that Mama, Gram, and Great Gram view the narrative as a  41  fixed oral text rather than one that is open to accumulation and transformation.  For instance, Spira suggests that the demand to Òmake generationsÓ Òserves as a means by which a sexual economy of slavery that reduced enslaved women to their reproductive capacities has become internalized and carried onÓ (120).  In other words, the Corregidora women do more than take on CorregidoraÕs nameÑthey also take on his politics concerning the value of the female womb, privileging reproduction in the same way that he Òfucked his own whores and fathered his own breedÓ (Corregidora 9).  Jones encodes the tragedy of this internalization in her description of the birthing processÑof the moment when a new generation comes into being as a new witness:   I never told you how Great Gram had Gram.  She thought she had to go to the toilet, and then something told her not to go outside to the outhouse like she was going to, and then she squat down on the chamber pot.  And then thatÕs how she had your Gram, coming out in the slop jar.  ThatÕs how we all begin, remember that.  ThatÕs how we all begin.  A mud ditch or a slop jar or hit the floor or the ground.  ItÕs all the sameÉ But you got to make generations, you go on making them anyway. (Corregidora 41)      As Mama tells this to Ursa, she is privileging procreationÑÒmaking generationsÓÑwhile simultaneously devaluing the human being or generation that results, aligning them linguistically with mud and excrement.  Hearing this description, Ursa learns to value her womb more than the rest of her subjectivity, which throws her life into crisis when it is surgically removed, leaving Òbarbed wire where a womb should be [and] curdled milkÓ (Corregidora 76).  As a result, she feels scarred, barren, and decayed, lacking the sexual organ both Corregidora and her foremothers valued both economically and metaphorically.    Ultimately, then, the binary between oppression (historical erasure) and agential resistance (making generations to pass on an oral testimony) is blurred significantly in  42  Corregidora, and critics who focus on the internalization of reproductive worth must be careful not to oversimplify UrsaÕs foremothers.  As Young points out, ÒWithin the constrained situation of slavery, the space of agency can seem remarkably similar to the space of captivity, as acts Ôof resistance exist within the context of relations of domination and are not external to themÕÓ (Haunting Capital 97).  Jones makes a point to throw these concepts into crisis to challenge the way we interpret the artificial binary of victimhood/agency, especially within the context of slavery.  One of the most telling instances of this collapse within the space of captivity happens in Great GramÕs description of the runaway boy while she is being raped:  ÒAnd then somehow it got into my mind that each time he [Corregidora] kept going down in me would be that boyÕs feets running.  And then when he come, it meant they caught himÓ (Corregidora 128).  Great Gram engages in a moment of translucence here, disrupting boundaries between subjectivities in order to Òencourag[e] the shimmering of [the textÕs] metaphorical layersÓ (Holloway 55-6).   Great GramÕs narration distorts the boundary between sexual abuse and liberationÑtransforming each violent thrust into another step towards freedom as she projects her own consciousness into the boyÕs, as emphasized by the final line.  When Corregidora ejaculates, Great GramÕs wombÑher worth, or her essence as coded throughout the novelÑis conquered and claimed by CorregidoraÕs sperm, emphasizing his claim over her as property and translating into the boy being Òcaught.Ó  Because resistance and oppression are so intimately linked in this moment and throughout the novel, Young challenges us to think of the Corregidora womenÕs Òurgency around bearing generationsÓ not as an internalization of CorregidoraÕs logic, per se, but rather as Òcovert resistance that overlaps with the forms of dominationÓ (Haunting Capital 101).  In this way, we can see how Jones complicates this binary in the same way she complicates all the othersÑchallenging grand narratives concerning racialized gender/sexuality and agency  43  while interrogating the intersections of institutions such as the law and economics within these grand narratives.  Furthermore, the vehicle Jones uses to engage in such an interrogation is the postmodern, ÒunnaturalÓ narration which utilizes such unconventional techniques as repetitive haunting and translucence in order to speak in new ways to the complexities of black female subjectivities.   Likewise, JonesÕs second novel, EvaÕs Man, interrogates the institutional consumption and maintenance of racialized gender discourse, similar to CorregidoraÕs interest in the conflation of sex and property.  However, JonesÕs second novel focuses more on the law and psychiatryÑtwo systems that are designed to protect and service the American populace but generally only manage to do so for the dominant races and genders.  The violent nature of EvaÕs transgression and resistance place her at the mercy of these institutional systems, which, as Trimiko Melancon states, Òare scrutinized in the novel for their accountability in creating social problemsÓ (135).  Within the judiciary and criminal psychiatry systems, black women are often consciously or unconsciously viewed as Òoutside the parameters of acceptability and protectionÉ which in turn subject[s] them to discursive and corporealÉ violenceÓ (Melancon 18-19).  According to Beth Richie, as a result, the force that the criminal justice system imposes upon black women can be rooted not only in Òmisunderstand[ings] and misinterpret[ations of] Black womenÕs experiences of male violenceÓ but also in Òracist stereotypesÓ (18), which leads black women to a severely distrust the ÒprotectiveÓ state.  This distrust is mentioned repeatedly throughout the novel, such as when EvaÕs prison bunkmate, Elvira, states, ÒI ainÕt never raised my hand against a man myself, cause if you donÕt get them, they get you, and if you do get them, the law get youÓ (EvaÕs Man 150).  Here, Elvira understands the systemic power positioned within both men and the lawÑwritten and enforced primarily by a white, heteropatriarchal  44  populationÑand in turn assumes that any violent resistance will not be interpreted as self defense but rather will affirm widely-held grand narratives concerning black womenÕs criminality and otherness.   Furthermore, Eva is simultaneously constrained by a narrow legal definition of victimhood that erases the complex nature of racialized gender violence and its subversiveÑand often violentÑresistance.  We see this quite clearly in the aftermath of DavisÕs death, where repeated interactions with state institutions are clearly marked by an inability to read EvaÕs victimization:  ÒÔShe got any marks on her?Õ [the captain] asked, still looking at me. / ÔNo, not a mark one [sic].  We had one of the policewomen check her over.Õ / ÔNo scratches, or nothing? / ÔNo sir. / ÔHe didnÕt beat her or anything?Õ / ÔNo sirÕÓ (EvaÕs Man 69).  The captain in this scene relies on the essentialist understanding of abuse as merely physical, so the lack of marks on EvaÕs body then resists an imposed schema of logical motive.  In fact, physical marks actually vilify rather than justify Eva, as Young has pointed out:  ÒAlfonso, Davis, and Moses Tripp have embodied evidence attesting to EvaÕs criminality while Eva has little but her silence to attest to her lifelong tormentÓ (ÒInheritingÓ 388).  By placing scars and physical marks of violence on the men rather than Eva, Jones purposefully points to the way the criminal justice system oversimplifies relationship violence to the point where it actually enacts an additional violence against women like Eva who do not fit neatly into the category of Òvictim.Ó   A lack of physical evidence, a history of racial grand narratives, and the troubling silence Eva exercises combine to produce a legal case shrouded in misinterpretations and assumptions that Eva attempts to disrupt throughout the course of the novel.  Although EvaÕs case is inherently complex, the law repeatedly explains her within the easiestÑand generally most stereotypicalÑterms.  When the captain reads her file, he begins with her early childhoodÑthe  45  names of her parents, where she was born, when she moves to New YorkÑand special emphasis is placed on her previous criminal history: ÒSheÕs been in trouble before.  When she was seventeen she stabbed a man.  She wouldnÕt talk then either, wouldnÕt say anything to defend herself.  She was given a six-month sentenceÓ (EvaÕs Man 70).  According to Young, this shallow description of EvaÕs life signifies how Òthe judicial system in EvaÕs Man reads EvaÕs eventual murder of Davis as the continuing degeneration of a criminal who, in a trial run of her murder, stabs Moses TrippÓ (ÒInheritingÓ 386).  The lawÕs linear interpretation of EvaÕs criminal history aligns itself with narratologist Shlomith Rimmon-KenanÕs definition of a traditional Òstory,Ó which Òdesignates the narrated eventsÉ reconstructed in their chronological orderÓ (qtd. in Richardson 94).  As Jones presentÕs EvaÕs story in a nonlinear fashion, then, she is simultaneously disrupting traditional narrative stories told in chronological order as well as the way the legal system interprets EvaÕs personal history.  The fact that Eva refuses to participate in this linear interpretation of her criminality is a linguistically coded act of agency and subversion, deciding instead to tell her audience her story through a temporally fragmented collision of narrated events.  In fact, Eva even reveals the murder and her incarceration before narrating the scene with Moses, so readers are incapable of even conceiving Moses as the precursor to DavisÕs murder (ÒInheritingÓ 386). Ultimately, as Megan Sweeney states, this disruption serves not only as Òa reminder that no easy formula and no readily identifiable single cause can capture the accumulation of lived experiences that lead so many women [of color] to prisonÓ (468-9), but it also serves to subvert traditional power structures wielded by the criminal justice system against black women who are not easily understood by essentialist stereotypes.  46  While reading EvaÕs Man, it is easy to recognize these temporal distortions and to understand how they might work to disrupt common sense readings of EvaÕs narrative; however, EvaÕs most transgressive act of subversionÑand the most difficult to wrestle withÑlies at the intersection of silence and personal agency.  Critics and readers alike have struggled with how to interpret EvaÕs silence throughout the novelÑwhether to blame Eva for her passivity, to sympathize with her inability to be heard by the system at large, or to read it as agential subversion.  Critic Melvin Dixon, for example, condemns Eva for ÒÔrebelling against languageÕ and imprisoning herself in silenceÓ (qtd. in Sweeney 464), whereas the imprisoned readers Sweeney interviewed Òempathize [with] the cultural refusal to hear her accounts of molestationÓ (464).  Although her silence can certainly be read in both capacities, I find JonesÕs use of silence here most convincing when read alongside MelanconÕs understanding of the classical black female script and YoungÕs interpretation of criminal confession.   When Eva Òjust let[s] the man tell his sideÓ (EvaÕs Man 98), she is embodyingÑand exaggerating for an almost satirical effectÑthe politics of respectability dictated by the classical black female script.  More importantly, however, while she remains silent, she is also refusing to participate in a legal system that objectifies marginalized ÒcriminalsÓ in order to reify its own structural authority.  Dating back to the early black womenÕs club movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, black women have ÒadoptedÉ a politics of silenceÓ and Òconventional bourgeois propriety in regards to sexuality, morality, and domesticityÓ in order to combat Òtheir stigmatization as the quintessence of devianceÓ at the hands of the white majority (Melancon 22).  Eva, as a black woman constrained by this classical black female script, veils her sexuality in a cloak of silence:  ÒI wanted him to stay closer, longer, to stay inside me longer, but he didnÕt, and I didnÕt ask him toÓ (EvaÕs Man 95).  However, she exaggerates the construct,  47  turning it into a caricature in order to demonstrate how ineffective it is for as a model for black womenÕs sexual identities (Melancon 2).  Ultimately, her silence infuriates her readers, positioning critics like June JordanÑwho actively call for positive images embedded in the classical black female script (Sweeney 469)Ñso that they critique EvaÕs exaggerated politics of silence as an imprisoning passivity.  Therefore, by embodying the classical black female script to a fault, Eva is able to subvert its power and convert representationalists to interrogators of these supposed ÒpositiveÓ images of racialized gender and sexuality.  EvaÕs silence also serves to subvert the power structures embedded in the legal system dependent on criminal confession.  As an institution that is already susceptible to misinterpretations of marginalized peopleÕs experiences, the language of the legal system, according to Toni Morrison, Òdoes more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledgeÓ (qtd. in Sweeney 479).  In other words, the legal system does not allow for narratives which challenge its own understanding of realityÑinstead it limits knowledge and enacts violence against black women like Eva who threaten the systemÕs authority over conventions of criminalization and victimhood.  If she had spoken, if she had confessed, the system would have Òdiminished the complexity of her actions as a black womanÓ and instead interpreted EvaÕs story in such a way to affirm its own biases, demanding that she produce an easily Òconsumable truthÓ and become a Òknown objectÓ (ÒInheritingÓ 385).  In this way, the legal system becomes an extension of DavisÑa heteropatriarchal structure of oppression that attempts to suck Eva hollow through its rituals of confession.  Rather than be consumed, however, EvaÑthe ultimate queen beeÑagain disrupts this direction of power and refuses to produce a consumable story for the judiciary system.  Her silence is an act of agency that challenges the legal systemÕs authority over her personal narrative.  48  If Eva invests this much energy in resisting the oversimplification and consumption of her story, we must consider closely the readerÕs position in relation to EvaÕs Man.  Similar to the way Eva invokes silence and temporal distortions to disrupt the authority of systemic institutions, I would argue that Eva places a thin veil of silence on the text and uses a transgressive narrative style to disrupt our act of consumption.  As ÒunnaturalÓ narratologist Brian Richardson states, in traditional, Òfictional first person narratives, the depiction of the fictional world is a constitutive actÑwhatever is said to exist thereby does existÓ (Richardson 92); however, in EvaÕs Man, the unnatural narrative world is filled with occasional gaps and contradictions which challenge this constitutive act.  Like the psychiatrist who attempts to derive both psychological motive and an interpretation of EvaÕs crime, readers may express Òimpatience and discomfort with the textÕs blurred distinctions between fact and fantasy and with its refusal to provide an explanation or final judgment of EvaÕs crimeÓ (Sweeney 460).  We empathize with the psychiatristÕs frustrations, such as when he asks, ÒIt was just because he kept you up in that room and kept his hands on you that you killed him?Ó (EvaÕs Man 171).  Without any other expressed motive, readers fall into traps created by the legal system, thus making us complicit in the institutions Eva subverts and challenges throughout the narrative:  ÒWhy didnÕt she leave?.... Davis was not Ôkeeping her hostageÕÓ (Sweeney 471).   We are simultaneously troubled as Eva travels down the ÒunnaturalÓ narrative rabbit hole, increasingly collapsing events, dialogue, reality, and apparent hallucinations; this might lead us to question EvaÕs sanity or to write off her story due to her circumstances, such as when the psychiatrist asks, ÒHave you had any hallucinations since I gave you these? / No. / Why did you think you bit it all off? / I did. / The police report says you didnÕtÓ (EvaÕs Man 167).  By aligning us with the judiciary system and the psychiatrist, Jones is pointing to our complicity in  49  these systems of oppression, asking us to interrogate our own consumption of EvaÕs story as an act of power while simultaneously allowing Eva to disrupt our gaze as she does with the other force relations in her life.  Through her use of gaps, contradictions, and the fabrication of an unnatural narrative world, Eva reclaims her agency and resists Òpenetration by others who wish to Ôunderstand herÉ [and] threate[n] her with imprisonment within monolithic meaningÓ (ÒInheritingÓ 387).  Thus, EvaÕs Man helps us to understand some of the dangers imbedded in the reading experience itselfÑthat the relationship between an author, a text, and the reader can be entrenched in systems of power that have the power to reinforce racial discourses rather than disrupt them.  Reading itself can be considered a voyeuristic gaze and an erasure created by empathy or judgment.  Young asserts that an extremely fine line Òexists between a visceral sympathetic reliving of trauma that engenders the black body and a fetishistic replacing/erasure of the subject by the reader/voyeur as she puts herself in anotherÕs shoesÓ (Haunting Capital 10).  The sexualized trauma in Corregidora has the danger of becoming, as UrsaÕs foremothersÕ states, Ònothing but sex circuses,Ó similar to the voyeurism that occurs on the Corregidora plantation:  with Òall them white peoples, mens, womens, and childrens crowding around to seeÓ (125).  Reading can be an act of entertainment or an act of sharing, and if the text invites the former, then the readerÕs gaze can be considered, as Maisha L. Wester states, a Òmoment of penetrationÉ rendering the voyeurÕs gaze a sort of sexual assaultÓ (9). Thus, Corregidora and EvaÕs Man both use ÒunnaturalÓ narrative techniques to establish distance from the reader, putting up barriers such as silence, polyphony, and translucence that force the reader to question her own position in relation to the text.  Reading itself is often thrown into crisis, leaving us to question why we need the motive for EvaÕs violence or why we  50  need to understand when Ursa is speaking rather than Mutt, Mama, Gram, or Great Gram.  Furthermore, the texts also ask us to question how we pass judgment on these characters who do not fit into the boxes constructed over centuries of racial discourse, just as Jones herself refuses to insert an authorial judgment into the textÑchoosing instead to Òrecord her observations with compassion and understanding,Ó as Claudia C. Tate suggests (142).  In this way, we can see just how transformative JonesÕs novels are, offering new spaces and challenging her readers to engage with representations of black women in relation to the many institutions that govern their lives.              51  Conclusion  Taken together, Gayl JonesÕs first two novels, Corregidora and EvaÕs Man, speak to the power of language: in its ability both to oppress and to serve as a vehicle for resistance while black women navigate racialized gender discourses embedded in the political, the economic, and the literary.  As Spillers states, Òsticks and bricks might break our bones, but words will most certainly kill usÓ (ÒMamaÕs BabyÓ 209); however, writers like Jones use words to subvert that destructive force, carving out spaces for difference and agency, while also throwing our commonly held beliefs about concepts such as these into crisis at every turn.  With temporal circularity/repetition, translucence, mythic and vulgar imagery, blues syntax and silent gaps in the story, Corregidora and EvaÕs Man interrogate the many complexities of black female subjectivities in transformative and controversial ways.   Maisha L. Wester notes that the context in which Jones is situated is a period abundant with postmodern texts which challenge fixed and essentialist interpretations of the African American community (152), but I would argue that the way Jones participates in this transgressive literary discourse is particularly fascinating because of its political implications. The post-Civil Rights period, as bell hooks states, ÒÔsuccessfully demanded a hearingÕ in part through embracing Ôthe politics of differenceÕÓ (qtd. in Wester 152), ushering in a variety of literary texts, particularly by African American female writers which were, as Holloway states, multiple in their narrative style:  Multiplied texts have figurative dimensions that continually reflect other, deeper dimensions.  Their language and their imaginative visions suggest a certain depth of memory that black womenÕs textual strategies are designed to acknowledge. (14)   52  Corregidora (with its multiplied narrators, mythic repetition, and displacing moments of rememory) and EvaÕs Man (with its fragmented, circular chronology and its disruptive imagery, which connects Eva to the lingering effects of both personal and collective history) are clearly prime examples of post-Civil Rights, postmodern texts that use unconventional techniques to open up literary representation for a politics of difference.  In this way, Jones is in fact speaking to a larger contextual turn towards multiplicity rather than essentialism, and it would be certainly be feasible to read her in relation to other black female writers who take up a politics of difference as well, although for the purpose of this project I have decided not to do so.    I do findÑas do many other scholarsÑthat what makes JonesÕs work so unique as well as so controversial is what some readers interpret as ambivalence, a lack of authorial judgment, and/or a refusal to create ÒpositiveÓ racialized gender representations.  Jones is quite conscious of her refusal to be either a ÒÔrepresentativeÕ black woman writerÓ or to construct Òpositive race images,Ó stating, ÒthereÕs a lot of imaginative territory that you have to be ÔwrongÕ in order to enterÓ (qtd. in Gottfried 559).  In entering this ÒwrongÓ space and constructing her narrative worlds there, Jones is pushing up against our conceptions of positive/negative race images and challenging us to think of why that distinction exists and how problematic it can be on the lives of black women who might embrace their own ÒwrongnessÓ alongside their Ògoodness.Ó  Patricia Hill Collins sums this up quite nicely, stating that replacing Ònegative images with positive ones can be equally problematic if the function of stereotypes as controlling images remains unrecognizedÓ (qtd. in Gottfried 561).  Jones not only recognizes the danger of controlling imagesÑwhether they be negative or positiveÑbut puts this recognition into shocking and moving practice as she tells her readers of the very human implications embedded in Ursa and EvaÕs highly personal and political stories.   53            WORKS CITED    54  WORKS CITED  Alber, Jan ager Heinze.  Unnatural Narratives--unnatural Narratology.  Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011.  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Private Lives, Proper Relations:  Regulating Black Intimacy.  Minneapolis, MN:  University of Minnesota Press, 2007.  Print.    Jones, Gayl and Michael S. Harper.  ÒGayl Jones:  An Interview.Ó  The Massachusetts Review, 18.4 (Winter, 1977):  692-715.  JSTOR.  Web.  20 Feb. 2016.   Melancon, Trimiko.  Unbought and Unbossed:  Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation.  Philadelphia, PA:  Temple University Press, 2014. Print.    Parham, Marisa.  Haunting and Displacement in African American Literature and Culture.  New York:  Routledge, 2009.  Print.   Richardson, Brian. Unnatural Voices:  Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction.  Columbus, OH:  The Ohio State University Press, 2006.  Print.  Richie, Beth E.  Arrested Justice:  Black Women, Violence, and AmericaÕs Prison Nation.  New York:  New York University Press, 2012.  Print.   Sharpe, Christina.  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Haunting Capital:  Memory, Text, and the Black Diasporic Body.  Hanover, NH:  Dartmouth College Press, 2006.  Print.   Young, Hershini Bhana.  ÒInheriting the Criminalized Black Body:  Race, Gender, and Slavery in EvaÕs Man.Ó  African American Review 39.3 (Fall 2005):  377-393.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  6 Apr. 2015.