A B S T R A C T

Black women writers offer valuable insight into domestic violence. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls (1975), and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) each offer realistic and compelling depictions of abuse that demand our attention. This project will juxtapose these literary texts’ explorations of domestic violence with legislative measures as well as contemporary public perceptions of abuse against black women. The purpose of pairing literature with the law is to expose the obstacles real women face when dealing with the trauma of abuse. Ultimately this project aims to raise awareness about domestic violence and to show the consequences as multifaceted and therefore something that affects all of us. My primary method will be literary analysis: I will rely on the aforementioned texts as sources for personal, albeit fictional, accounts of violence. I will also, however, incorporate selected scholarly texts and statistics from the fields of psychology and women's studies and legal documents to examine domestic violence as a serious social problem and threat to women’s health and wellbeing. I will document public perception of domestic violence via pop culture using the music and celebrity of Rihanna and Beyoncé. The audience for my research includes anyone interested in female empowerment and the obstacles to it, African-American literature and pop culture, and the laws regarding domestic violence.