&NOW 2018

Central to the organization of the “Me, Too” movement is the assumption that trans and cis women are frequently victims of cis male violence. Yet fictionalized depictions of violence remain a staple of mainstream male literary achievement, while women’s literary depictions of violence are frequently marginalized, dismissed as autobiographical or excessive. What if one response to the “Me, Too” movement’s call to action was to speak openly of violence, not only through autobiographical posts and hashtags, but through fictional characters and poetic personas, reclaiming violence for our literary swords? Through a roundtable discussion with brief illustrative readings from authors’ original violent works-in-progress, this panel will examine rationales and strategies for depicting violence in literary contexts, as well as the potential consequences for women writers. Crucial to our reclaiming of violence as a literary strategy is our insistence on viewing the word “woman” through an intersectional lens, reflecting our racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, and class differences, and the complexity of speaking our truth under a hostile political regime.