Spurred on by Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys (2019), which is set in Tallahassee, FL, during the 1950s and 1960s, this essay presents a close-up look at James Baldwin’s visit to Tallahassee in May 1960. Moving between Baldwin’s writings about the South, especially “They Can’t Turn Back,” published by Mademoiselle magazine in August 1960, and subsequent writing about the movement in Tallahassee, and checking off against Whitehead’s fictional treatment, we find a lattice of silences obscuring the names and contributions of Black women. Most importantly, we find that the historic case of the rape of Betty Jean Owens in May 1959, and the subsequent trial that summer, appears neither in Baldwin’s nor Whitehead’s writing about Tallahassee at the time. This essay establishes the missing names of Black women in the places marked and unmarked by Baldwin in his work at the time, and puts the case of Betty Jean Owens on the historical map where it belongs. In so doing, we figure issues of race, gender, sex, and violence for the ways they twist together, ways suppressed in historical (and even some contemporary) writing, ways crucial to our deepening consideration of Baldwin’s work and the history which he drew upon and to which he contributed so profoundly.
To consider how James Baldwin resisted racialized notions of sexuality in his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, I employ a number of black feminist critics—including Saidiya Hartman, Patricia Williams, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Hill Collins—to analyze three under-studied minor characters: Deborah, Esther, and Richard. Those three characters are best understood as figures of heterosexual nonconformity who articulate sophisticated and important critiques of rape and marriage in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Baldwin thus wrote subversive theories of race and sexuality into the margins of the novel, making its style inextricable from its politics. Baldwin’s use of marginal voices was a deft and intentional artistic choice that was emancipatory for his characters and that remains enduringly relevant to American sexual politics. In this particularly polarizing transition from the Obama era to the Donald J. Trump presidency, I revisit Baldwin’s ability to subtly translate political ideas across fault lines like race, nationality, and sex.
, 2019 ). This concealment has legal, medical, mental health and other implications for survivors. It also bolsters the misconception that men are violated only when they are completely powerless (i.e. as captives) and may result in differential treatment in legal contexts ( Sellers, 2007 ). Misconception 2: The Most Common Form of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence against Men and Boys Is Anal Rape Among humanitarian aid workers and health providers, sexual
the LGBTI community, seemingly moving towards Dolan’s (2016) ‘inclusive gender’. The ‘quick fix’ approach overlooks the how men experience CRSV differently from women. Research reveals that CRSV/M goes beyond rape ( Eriksson Baaz and Stern, 2013 : 34) (including anal penetration using sticks or rifles). Other forms of CRSV/M include genital harm, such as penile amputation and electrocution of the genitals, and sexual humiliation, such as
. For us, just even participating in a cluster meeting is itself advocacy, to highlight what’s happening. MD: It’s taking this rights framework, and then looking at our work through that. We’re not independent, and we’re not a human rights organization. The accusation exists that sometimes we were, like during the case of the Darfur rapes. We were told that this is none of our business, but we’re treating women there and we made a report on what they told us. 4 We don’t try to verify things, we don’t triangulate data, not quite the way that Amnesty [International
post-conflict phases ( Bouta et al. , 2005 : 33). Unfortunately, GBV is a prominent feature of the daily experience of displaced women (and, as is increasingly being recognised, men); and even with the notion of rape as a ‘weapon of war’, women are commonly at greater risk of sexual assault from within their community ( Ager, 2014 : 436). Stark et al. ’s (2010) study of women in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Northern Uganda shows a
violence, specifically marital rape ( Mazurana et al. , 2019 ). The rationale linking conflict and child marriage is that families face increased economic pressure and protection risks that result in them marrying off their daughters. However, existing reviews of evidence highlight that research on child marriage in humanitarian settings is limited, requiring further, context-specific research ( Mazurana et al. , 2019 ). In some settings, families may be motivated to marry off their daughters due to the practice of bride price, which may be viewed as a means of
their history or their demands, or to explain the power relationships between the different groups and the logic behind the violence they were engaged in. Two of the most common ‘hooks’ I found were the rapes they were suspected of committing and the child soldiers they were reported to have among their ranks. Twenty-eight per cent (16/58) of the pieces by special correspondents to eastern DRC that I examined for my thesis on the Mai-Mai mentioned rape. The issues of
acknowledges the fact that dealing with migration today in Europe is extremely political. It points to existing maritime law and international humanitarian law to remind states of their obligations. And what’s really interesting since the end of June is that we have ended up in a situation in which rogue European states are deliberately throwing the law to the dogs. Now we know exactly what’s going on in Libya. We know that European states are responsible for refoulement , sending people back to torture, rape and detention in Libya. This is completely
the desires of the global north ( Lemma, 2018 ; Kagumire, 2018 ; Nabumira, 2018 ). Indeed, the public conversation around the 2018 Oxfam scandal on Twitter was shaped by Mary Beard, the Oxford classicist, musing that ‘I do wonder how hard it must be to sustain “civilised” values in a disaster zone’; after she was criticised for seemingly excusing the rape and abuse of women and girls in Haiti, she posted a picture of herself crying with the statement that ‘I am