ardstick against which the cult of true womanhood was measured. Moreover, this entire situation was profitable. Rape and Sexual Violence Force was important in creating African-American women's centrality to American images of the sexualized woman and in shaping their experiences with both pornography and prostitution. Black women did not willingly submit to their exhibition on southern auction blocks-they were forced to do so. Enslaved African women could not choose whether to work-they were beaten and often killed if they refused. Black domestics who resisted the sexual advances of their employers often found themselves looking for work where none was to be found. Both the reality and the threat of violence have acted as a form of social control for African-American women. Rape has been one fundamental tool of sexual violence directed against African-American women. Challenging the pervasiveness of Black women's rape and sexual extortion by white men has long formed a prominent theme in Black women's writings. Autobiographies such as Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) and Harriet Jacobs's "The Perils of a Slave Woman's Life" (1860/1987)from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl record examples of actual and threatened sexual assault. The effects of rape on African-American women is a prominent theme in Black women's fiction. Gayl Jones's Corregidora (1975) and Rosa Guy's A Measure of Time (1983) both explore interracial rape of Black women. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970), Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982), and Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place (1980) all examine rape within African-American families and communities. Elizabeth Clark-Lewis's(1985) study of domestic workers found that mothers, aunts, and community othermothers warned young Black women about the threat of rape. One respondent in Clark-Lewis's study, an 87-year-old North Carolina Black domestic worker, remembers, "nobody was sent ou...
