Teaching African American Women’s Experiences With Intimate Male Partner Violence

Abstract

In earlier research on religious coping and intimate male partner violence, the author interviewed African American women who had experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse by a spouse. This article describes how she uses these narrative accounts to help university students empathically experience the women’s responses to spousal abuse. Interview data, researcher accounts, and gender violence literature combine to validate both the universal and uncommon nature of Black women’s struggle with intimate male partner violence. Black feminist principles are used as a framework for exposing the multiple dynamics that intersect abused African American women’s experiences and worldviews.