Experiences of physical, sexual, and narrative violence against girls and women across ancient and contemporary contexts, and resistance to such atrocities are what link these three images. Historically, countless girls and women have been subjugated by dominant males who rendered disempowered females inferior. The stories of the unnamed virgins in the book of Esther, of Hadassah (Esther) herself, of Vashti, and of Harriet Tubman all elucidate that many girls and women of various ages, ethnicities, and nationalities have been physically and sexually abused, enslaved, and subjected to narrative erasure, notwithstanding the diversity of their class and of the other social identities they embody. Enslaved girls and women, colonized virgin girls, queens: none is exempt from the brutal mechanisms of kyriarchy, patriarchy, and other forms of horrific violence unleashed by hegemonic males in androcentric societies.

These stories also illuminate, particularly, that ethnically-othered girls across ancient and contemporary contexts are often perceived as especially trafficable, exploitable, enslave-able, and rape-able.

Attention to intersectionality—a framework that identifies the interlinked and complex ways that power interlocks (this critical lens clarifies that people experience privilege and/or oppression at the intersection of multiple embodiments of social identity—e.g. race/ethnicity, gender, class, ability, sexuality, nationality, etc.)—enables readers to perceive the roles of ethnicity and class, as they intersect with gender, in contributing to female experiences of and vulnerability to physical and sexual exploitation (Crenshaw 1989). Likewise, attention to the mechanisms and dangers of kyriarchy enable biblical readers to understand that the oppression of Africana* girls and other minoritized victims of enslavement and trafficking in the book of Esther is intentional and systematic. Moreover, these girls and women are socialized to be complicit in their oppression by accepting a subordinate status.

Specifically, in the book of Esther, references to geographical locales help bring into focus girls with specific ethnic and national identities—from the continent of Africa to the subcontinent of India (1:1)—who are captured and transported to Susa in response to the king’s decree. These locales are likewise central in the transatlantic slave trade from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. When we put biblical African girls’ and women’s experiences in dialogue with experiences of enslaved Africana girls and women during and after the transatlantic slave trade, like Harriet Tubman, we might perceive their experiences of trafficking, enslavement, and rape across contexts as collective, intergenerational, and cultural traumas.

Silence and secrecy are also prominent themes in the book of Esther. Outside of Queen Vashti and Hadassah—whose Hebrew name is initially identified though she is thereafter referred to by her given Persian name (even the biblical book in the Jewish canon bears her Persian name)—the names and identities of countless other victims of gender-based violence and sexualized abuse are concealed. Moreover, euphemisms are used to describe characters and their actions such as ‘the maiden who pleases the king’ or those concubines whom the king ‘delighted in’ (2:4, 14) which further contributes to silence and concealment obscuring sexual abuse and trauma within the text. Silence, secrecy, namelessness, narrative suppression and erasure, and euphemisms function to mask abuse, exploitation, and terror. These devices conceal the identities of vulnerable individuals, often prohibit readers and interpreters from identifying abuse, and may limit readers’ ability to recognize the girls and women within these stories as embodying assertive and audacious refusal, resistance, and resilience.

These three works of art invite readers to demask the abuse of biblical and other ancient and modern girls and women alike. By overlaying images of Hadassah and Harriet, Fred Wilson foregrounds the multiple and intersecting oppressions that enslaved persons endure (including physical and sexual violence) in colonial cultures. Marcelle Hanselaar’s art accentuates both the intoxication and lasciviousness of the king and other ruling males in the story world (which leads to the legalization of male dominance) and the fiery dissent of Queen Vashti, which leads to her dethronement. Ira Mallory’s screen portrait of Queen Hadassah foregrounds the weightiness of wearing the crown. Hadassah started as a lower-class Hebrew girl, the descendant of enslaved people, and was transformed into a Persian queen. She endured violence to become queen and—along with her people—faced threats of violence after becoming the king’s consort. Yet she uses her agency and power to defend the vulnerable. Undefended yet willing to defend others, that is a heaviness that far too many minoritized girls and women carry.

These three images invite readers to #SayHerName, and to share ancient and contemporary girls’ and women’s stories, especially those whose names we’ll never know or be able to say. They invite readers and interpreters to recognize these feisty, fierce defenders of liberation, ethnic, and gender equality, and human dignity.

References

*By Africana, I mean collective communities of girls and women located on the continent of Africa, and/or who descend from the continent, and/or who have been displaced from the continent through the transatlantic slave trade or voluntary migration.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory. and Antiracist Politics’. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 140: 139–167

Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schüssler. 2016. Congress of Wo/men: Religion, Gender and Kyriarchal Power (Cambridge: Feminist Studies in Religion Books)