Date of Award
2009
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Abstract
Scholars of the literary depictions of lynching have given the majority of their attention to the emasculation of the black male, but the representation of the black female lynch victim has been overlooked. My thesis examines the deaths of black women that had the same effect as lynching practices used against men. This specific literary form of lynching will concentrate on two plays: Mary P. Burrill's They That Sit in Darkness (1919) and Marita Bonner's Exit: An Illusion (1929) and two novels by Toni Morrison, Beloved and Sula. Considering the contours of these black female deaths we can expand the traditional definition of lynching to include the black female lynch victim. The aspects that make her death a lynching are encased in more subtleties than a traditional definition of lynching allows for, and less visible.
Extent
vi, 50 p.
Recommended Citation
Williams, Tinea., "Bleeding roots" (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2000 - 2009. 1623.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_5/1623
Identifier
FADT199329
Comments
by Tinea Williams.|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009.|Includes bibliography.|Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.|by Tinea Williams.