| dc.description.abstract | Often, Esther is viewed as a story about the Jewish people surviving a foiled genocide, but I posit Esther contains other stories of survival. This project broadly examines non-Jewish people’s survival in Esther and throughout the Hebrew Bible. Accessing Delores Williams’ hermeneutic of survival in Sisters in the Wilderness, I engage womanist interpretation with trauma theory to create a trauma-informed womanist hermeneutic of survival. Initially, starting with seven terms from Esther, I examine and document each occurrence of the term with surrounding terms in the Hebrew Bible. In constructing this Lexicon of Survival, I identify 983 likely instances of survival, of which 512 are survival experiences of women and girls and classify different types of survivors.
Survival passages identified in the Lexicon of Survival are the foundation for a survival narrative. Attention is given to the characters in the text, their experiences, language, silence, and social locations. I identify gaps in the text about the characters and gaps in cultural nuances important to survivance. Since the Hebrew Bible does not always provide detailed background information for certain cultural elements, I engage archaeology, literature, and historical sources for character development in context. The survival narratives I construct use an internalized focus on characters who are not Jewish and whose presence is lifted from the text or gaps in the text.
Emphasizing how girls, not women, are initiated into survival, I argue that girls are routinely taken, sexually trafficked, and abused by the king’s order. I read the passage intertextually with Maya Angelou’s experience of childhood sexual abuse in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and I construct a survival narrative about the experience of a young virgin girl named Khina. Khina’s story emphasizes the presence and experience of the young virgin girl and reveals the multitude of abuse and survival that reach far beyond the primary character Esther.
I intentionally shift from actual survivors to an implied survivor through a narrative constructed from Zeresh’s point of view. Zeresh, the wife of Haman, is often ignored in scholarship. I name Zeresh as not only a wife but a mother, counselor, and implied survivor of the murder of her husband and ten sons because nothing in the text indicates she was killed. Next, I read her experience of her sons’ being hanged at the king’s order with Lezley McSpadden’s experience in Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil: The Life and Legacy of My Son Michael Brown discussing her son being killed in a state-sanctioned murder. These survival narratives require the reader to imagine a marginalized character’s experience and expand their view beyond the central characters’ experience. Lastly, reading Esther with Black women’s autobiographies and constructing womanist survival narratives, I identify possible survival strategies available in various situations. | en_US |
