Author: Carlyn Ena Ferrari, Department of English, Seattle University - Personal Website

Abstract: »Gayl Jones’s 1975 novel Corregidora is fraught with the violent, cyclical nature of sexual assault, domestic abuse, and post-emancipation generational trauma. 1 Often analyzed through the lens of blues music, the novel follows the journey of Ursa Corregidora, a Kentucky blues singer who must redefine herself as a Black woman after an “accident” renders her infertile. 2 Jones centers the abuse and assault of Black women in Corregidora, and she skillfully situates Black womanhood and the Black female body within the context of colonialism and slavery in Brazil and juxtaposes these histories with Ursa’s present in 1940s–1960s Kentucky. Of the assaults that Jones frankly discusses in the novel, she also implicitly engages in ecological assault and the violence that colonialism inflicts upon the natural world. In her depiction of slavery, Jones includes subtle yet scathing references that remind readers that the land is not just simply present. Like Ursa’s maternal ancestors, the natural world, too, is a character that holds legacies of colonial violence and white supremacy. In other words, the violence that Black women experience in the novel also extends to the natural world.« (Source: ISLE)

Wikipedia: History of the Americas: History of the United States | Literature: American literature / Gayl Jones | Literature: Novels about rape / Corregidora (novel) | Sex and the law: Rape / Rape in the United States