Eva's Man's Unspeakable Risk.

Gayl Jones's warily canonical Eva's Man (1976) demands to be encountered on its own terms without conscription into positive framings. The novel, about a woman imprisoned in a psychiatric ward for poisoning and orally castrating her lover, represents violent eroticism and excruciatingly grotesque images that are, of course, fantasy representations. Nevertheless, they are some of the most transgressive ever published and Jones refers to the novel as a "horror story." I argue, through close readings of the novel and its historical criticism, that Jones has been marginalized within the Black literary canon throughout much of her career largely due to her fearless exploration of erotic, asymmetrical power dynamics represented through ambiguously consensual sexualized violence. Eva's Man troubles the delineation between victim and agent which is perhaps what is most ideologically risky about it. The novel allows for an open exploration of transgressive desire not necessarily bound to abuse or trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]