November 18, 2015 - 20:28
As I began reading Eva's Man, new silences emerged. As I was reading, I understood what the author was saying, but the jumping from place to place confused me. There is silence in not knowing, not understanding, not responding. I keep thinking about gender as well and a silencing by way of ignoring consent, overpowering by numbers and masculinity, and fear. There is silence when Freddy and his buddies see Eva and he says, "There's Eva, we can get some" (19). Eva speaks no words. She runs. She is silenced, because her consent doesn't matter. The boys outnumber her and feel so powerful because of their masculinity. Before he moves to Jamaica, Freddy says he will miss Eva, but he doesn't respect her (21). Fox News quotes and snippets from long-ago overheard conversations float to my mind, justifications for sexual harrassment: "boys will be boys... they're just trying to be nice... that's how they show affection." A boy used to tease me in high school. My parents laughed it off, claiming, "He probably just has a crush on you." Why has the world become a place where it is okay to show you like someone by teasing or harassing them? There is silence in the words Eva's mother does not say about Tyrone: "Why don't you come peel the potatoes?" she says to Eva instead (27). And silence when her parents do not talk about Tyrone with each other, even though Eva's father knows her mother is sleeping with this other man (29). There is silence in the lost memories and the loss of credibility that comes with it: "He [the psychiatrist] tells me I do not know how to separate the imagined memories from the real ones" (10). Even though Eva breaks her silence and talks to reporters about her crime, she is silenced by their portrayal of her. They focus in on her crime and silence her complex personhood. They silence her truths by claiming she is lying: "I tell them it ain't me lying, it's memory lying. I don't believe that, because the past is still as hard on me as the present, but I tell them that anyway" (5).
Like the silence activity this past Tuesday, we can be silenced by others. Eva is silenced by her encounters with sexual assault. The boys and men cause her to be afraid. In the game, I wouldn't say my fear is comparable to Eva's, but I was nervous of getting scratched, distrustful of other people. Silencing experiences with some people can negatively affect other relationships through this fear. Fear itself is silence (being silenced) in a sense--a suppression of the self, a dark corner, loneliness.
I have never paid so much attention to what isn't said or written, to silence, in my reading (not counting other readings for this class). It is interesting and important to look not only at the words that are said, the voices that cry out, but also the words that are hidden, the voices that cry quietly to themselves.