Eva’s (In)visible Man: Reading Gayl Jones through the Lens of Black Male Vulnerability

I AM AN invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (3) Despite its title, Gayl Jones’s 1976 novel Eva’s Man is not a story of a man. Instead, it is a disturbing account of the experiences of an abused woman, Eva Medina Canada, who grotesquely murders Davis Carter, a man she had met a few days prior. Critical readings of this novel have often centered around the victimization of women by men, and many critics have explored the power relations between Eva and her male abusers and their connection to US history and (gender) politics.1 While exploring Eva’s Man from the perspective of Black women’s victimization is certainly relevant and necessary, my aim is to read beyond a victim/perpetrator binary and focus attention on the male victim and female perpetrators that are seldom addressed in critical readings of this novel or in scholarship more generally. Drawing on Tommy J. Curry’s theorization of Black male vulnerability (Man-Not), I examine the (in)visibility of Black men as victims and women as perpetrators across the spectrum of intergenerational and interpersonal violence reproduced in society and reflected in the novel. Reading the male character as not merely a metonym for masculine aggression against women but also as a victim allows us to understand the novel more deeply. Not only does Davis stand for and remind Eva of her previous abusers, but he is also a victim of the same cycle of violence in which Eva is victimized and in which all the characters, men and women, are involved. First, I show how the cycle of violence is constructed in the novel. Then, I explore the ways in which the author negotiates the histories of Black male vulnerability. Lastly, I show how the female/male juxtaposition presented in the narrative, along with racialized gender stereotypes, prevents us from attending to female perpetrators of sexual harassment and violence. Rereading the novel through the lens of Black male vulnerability enables us to see beyond racialized gender stereotypes and binaries and focus instead on the spectrum of violence itself to better understand its psychological, social, and political functions and ramifications.