Gender Violence against Women from the Global South in Merlinda Bobis’ White Turtle

Abstract

[Abstract] This end-of-degree thesis explores the manifestations of gender violence against women from the Global South in three short stories from Merlinda Bobis’ collection White Turtle (1999): “Storm,” “The Long Siesta as Language Primer,” and “Fish-Hair Woman.” For this purpose, I study the structural dynamics that underlie gender violence in the Global South by analyzing the psychological, physical, and sexual abuses Bobis’ female characters suffer. My investigation focuses on the hegemonic discourses that guarantee women’s systematic vulnerability, with special attention to the interaction of gender, class, and ethnicity. Moreover, I demonstrate that Global South women suffer from specific forms of gendered violence. Regarding the methodology, I conduct a close-reading analysis to study the themes, form, and possible meanings of the above-cited pieces from Merlinda Bobis’ collection. As for the critical background, I rely on research articles about gender violence by scholars like Nancy Felipe Russo or Carrie L. Yodanis. The specialized work of authors such as Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez, which provides a nuanced vision of gender violence in the Global South, is fundamental for laying the theoretical foundations of my project. To enrich my feminist interpretation, I resort to the work of intellectuals like Judith Butler, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and Gayatri Spivak, among others. This paper is divided into two main parts: the first one defines gender violence and explains the essentialist processes that homogenize Global South women as referents of said violence; the second one provides my critical analysis and interpretation of the three short stories, from a feminist standpoint. Therefore, this second part consists of three subsections, each one containing a study of the social dynamics that cause the examples of gender violence presented in the texts, attending to questions of sexism, misogyny, and racism. As a result, my analysis offers an examination of female subjugation in the (post)colonial context of the Philippines, through a critical reading of Merlinda Bobis’ narratives. The selected texts uncover how systemic injustice operates across intersecting dimensions, including ethnicity, economic disenfranchisement, and gendered power hierarchies. Bobis’ stories criticize sociocultural and political frameworks that legitimize female exploitation and commodification, while also foregrounding the internal conflicts experienced by those subject to coercive norms. By engaging with themes such as prostitution, sexual commodification and harassment, the author destabilizes traditional constructs that have historically silenced marginalized voices. Therefore, her narrative strategy simultaneously denounces hegemonic ideologies and fosters resistance emerging from subaltern ommunities. The complex portrayals of women's endurance in adverse environments uncover broader global dynamics that perpetuate inequity, particularly within regions impacted by historical conquest and economic marginalization. Moreover, Bobis’ work functions as a literary intervention that challenges prevailing narratives, offering alternative epistemologies rooted in local experiences. These fictional accounts thus transcend the personal to underscore a collective memory shaped by displacement, struggle, and survival. Ultimately, the stories in White Turtle advocate for a critical reassessment of dominant paradigms, paving the way for transformative discourses in feminist thought and decolonial critique.