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"This book examines portrayals of political and psychological trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in the work of seven American women writers. Concentrating on novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pauline Hopkins, Gayl Jones, Leslie Marmon Silko, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood, Harvitz investigates whether memories of violent and oppressive trauma can be preserved, even transformed into art, without reproducing that violence. The book encompasses a wide range of personal and political traumas, including domestic abuse, incest, rape, imprisonment, and slavery, and argues that an analysis of sadomasochistic violence is our best protection against cyclical, intergenerational violence, a particularly timely and important subject as we think about how to stop "hate" crimes and other forms of political and psychic oppression."--Jacket.

American fiction --- Psychological fiction, American --- Psychoanalysis and literature --- Women and literature --- Psychic trauma in literature. --- Sex crimes in literature. --- Violence in literature. --- Sadism in literature. --- Memory in literature. --- Psychic trauma in literature --- Sex crimes in literature --- Violence in literature --- Sadism in literature --- Memory in literature --- American Literature --- English --- Languages & Literatures --- Literature --- Literature and psychoanalysis --- Psychoanalytic literary criticism --- American psychological fiction --- American literature --- Memory as a theme in literature --- Women authors --- History and criticism. --- History and criticism

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Reading Rape examines how American culture talks about sexual violence and explains why, in the latter twentieth century, rape achieved such significance as a trope of power relations. Through attentive readings of a wide range of literary and cultural representations of sexual assault--from antebellum seduction narratives and "realist" representations of rape in nineteenth-century novels to Deliverance, American Psycho, and contemporary feminist accounts--Sabine Sielke traces the evolution of a specifically American rhetoric of rape. She considers the kinds of cultural work that this rhetoric has performed and finds that rape has been an insistent figure for a range of social, political, and economic issues. Sielke argues that the representation of rape has been a major force in the cultural construction of sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and indeed national identity. At the same time, her acute analyses of both canonical and lesser-known texts explore the complex anxieties that motivate such constructions and their function within the wider cultural imagination. Provoked in part by contemporary feminist criticism, Reading Rape also challenges feminist positions on sexual violence by interrogating them as part of the history in which rape has been a convenient and conventional albeit troubling trope for other concerns and conflicts. This book teaches us what we talk about when we talk about rape. And what we're talking about is often something else entirely: power, money, social change, difference, and identity.

Violence in literature. --- Sex crimes in literature. --- Rape victims in literature. --- Rape --- English language --- Women and literature --- Feminism and literature --- Rape in literature. --- American fiction --- Assault, Criminal (Rape) --- Assault, Sexual --- Criminal assault (Rape) --- Nonconsensual sexual intercourse --- Sexual assault --- Offenses against the person --- Sex crimes --- Literature --- History. --- Rhetoric. --- History and criticism. --- Women authors --- Rape in literature --- Rape victims in literature --- Sex crimes in literature --- Violence in literature --- History and criticism --- History --- Rhetoric --- Germanic languages --- American fiction - History and criticism --- Feminism and literature - United States - History --- Women and literature - United States - History --- English language - United States - Rhetoric --- Rape - United States - History --- Literature and feminism --- Forced sexual intercourse --- Forced sexual penetration --- Penetration, Forced sexual --- Sexual intercourse, Forced --- Sexual intercourse, Nonconsensual --- Sexual penetration, Forced