Authors: Prerika Thakur, Assistant professor Ms. Swarali joshi
Abstract: This paper flips the script on how we think about silence in early-to-mid 20th-century African American women’s novels. Instead of seeing silence as a void, a sign of weakness, or defeat, I treat it as an active, creative space—a kind of workshop where characters rebuild themselves after trauma and find ways to push back against oppression, even if they never say a word. I dig into five classic novels—Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ann Petry’s The Street, Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Through close readings of key moments, I show how silence actually does a lot of heavy lifting. Celie, in The Color Purple, pieces together her world through quilting. Janie in Their Eyes, with her loose hair and powerful testimony, refuses to disappear. Lutie’s quiet struggle in a windy hallway in The Street stands up to a city always watching. Vyry’s work in the kitchen in Jubilee carries survival skills across generations. And Helga Crane’s withdrawal in Quicksand hints at doors that never open for some voices. I ground my thinking in trauma theory (Caruth, Laub), Black feminist thought (Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Audre Lorde), postcolonial critique (Spivak), and the idea of hidden resistance (James C. Scott), while also pushing back against Eurocentric blind spots with insights from Stef Craps and Ruth Leys. The way these novels are written—the gaps in letters, the tight realism, the messy endings—pulls readers into the experience of silence, demanding we feel its weight. In worlds scarred by Jim Crow and haunted by slavery, silence becomes a tool for survival, a way to pass on knowledge, and a quiet kind of rebellion. I argue that, instead of seeing silence as something broken or sick, we should recognize it as a powerful, political force—a way of thinking that doesn’t always need words.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18411632
