Eva's Man (Black Women Writers Series) Book

Through the first fifty pages, I thought I understood what the book wanted to do, but then the rug was slowly pulled out from beneath me, and the last half of the book was a whirlpool of nightmare images, recurring metaphors that scratched me every time they whipped by. This book is not about plot, it is about emotion, with all of its contradictions and confusions. Nobody acts from any one reason -- we have uncountable reasons for doing (or not doing) what we do, from combing our hair to rape, to murder, we do it for a thousand reasons, and none at all.
Megan Sweeney, author of Reading is my window : books and the art of reading in women's prisons, used this book as one of her titles in a women's prison book group as she investigated how women prisoners use victimization narratives to construct their own healing. She reports that women were split on responses towards how Eva refused to speak in her own defense. Is she empowered by choosing silence, or has she been silenced, and therefore remains a victim? After my read, I still can't answer that question...