Healing without a Cure

Abstract

Even after decades of feminist organizing, individualized framings of intimate partner violence continue to affect how it is understood. Despite general public sentiment that survivors deserve empathy, victim blaming persists through widespread perceptions of domestic abuse as rooted in individual behavior instead of as an instantiation of health injustice unfolding in a context of gender and racial terror. This chapter examines how certain Latinx literary representations of gender-based violence can help reframe it as a public health crisis rather than a personal failure. It examines journalistic, musical, and literary texts by Sonia Nazario, Alynda Segarra/Hurray for the Riff Raff, Manuel Muñoz, Rigoberto González, and Angie Cruz, attending to how each creates (or forecloses) new narratives of gender violence.