The Representation of Systemic Racial and Gender-Based Violence and Its Effects in Pearl Cleage's Flying West and Bourbon at the Border

The overwhelming sense of instability and distress this causes, and the conspicuous rise in heinous crime and racial and gender chauvinism, harassment and bullying all around the globe demand a scrutiny of the insidiousness of violence. This is a moral responsibility of any contemporary author. The current paper analyzes images of systemic racial and gender-based violence in two fictional dramatic works created by African American playwright Pearl Cleage in the 1990s, while reflecting on post-Reconstruction Black American history. To inspect the surreptitious effects of systemic violence as portrayed in the two plays, the paper first discusses forms of violence. It is claimed that Cleage reminds modern audiences of the lengthy history of white violence ingrained in the formation of the United States and that the two analyzed plays illustrate the oppressive consequences of such systemic violence.