by Corrine Watson
December 5, 2023
Corrine Watson is a freelance writer and editor based in Charlotte, NC and is Reviews Editor for West Trade Review. Her work has appeared in Wretched Creations and the Southern Review of Books. Follow her on Twitter @CorrineWatson6.
The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patrícia Melo; Sophie Lewis (Translator); Restless Books; 272 pages; $17.00.
Grappling with the scourge of femicide in a remote region of Brazil, Patrícia Melo’s The Simple Art of Killing a Woman draws attention to the multifaceted ways that systemic disenfranchisement results in violence against women. Between depictions of court hearings and investigations, Melo blends in the effects of trauma and mythology as the narrator reflects on her past. In fashion with the #MeToo movement, Melo’s exploration of the ways violence against women escalates to murder stands out for the ways it calls for women to speak out and give a voice not only to the issue but to those who have been robbed of their voice and their story.
The novel follows an unnamed first-person narrator as she travels to Acre, Brazil on a research trip to document court hearings regarding the murder of women. Through this research, the narrator aims to illustrate “how the state creates murderers by sanctioning the asymmetry in gender relations.” This is apparent in the courtroom as defendants walk away with light sentences or the victim’s reputation was called into question as if the justice system was holding her accountable for her own murder. Melo breaks up chapters with poetic interludes explaining the deaths of murdered women. These sections read like a case file or crime scene notes, and while devastating, Melo is able to illustrate the trivial infractions these women commit against men to find themselves on the receiving end of violence. They were naggy, dinner was late, they had affairs, or worse — they tried to leave. There is obviously no justification for these actions to escalate to murder, but, in the end, these women were in a space where a man was angry and felt the need to assert his dominance.
While several cases are related to domestic abuse, the novel focuses on the particularly complex and gruesome murder of Tuxpria, an indigenous teenage girl, at the hands of three wealthy white men. Throughout the novel, Melo explores the region, the characters, and the brutality of the plot with genuine care that draws out the heaviness of the circumstances while challenging the reader to consider the broader picture. And Tuxpria’s case masterfully captures each of these complexities as it goes beyond the binaries of gendered violence and shows how these “institutions were not built with the indigenous people in mind.” The stark contrast with Tuxpria’s indigenous community to the three white, wealthy defendants illustrates the caste system of Cruzeiro do Sul. Carla, the prosecutor in Tuxpria’s case argues that “there isn’t a single policy for indigenous people. They simply don’t belong to our society — they don’t exist.” The narrator finds the injustice of Tuxpria’s murder particularly unacceptable as these men were able to walk free based on their wealth, reputation, and lineage as the descendants of the town founders who’d originally decimated the land and enslaved the indigenous community. Through these layers of nuance, Melo is able to illustrate that the legal system, while flawed, often functions just as it’s intended. It promotes the rich while punishing the poor, and in the case of an indigenous woman, it is at a loss to defend someone who it was never structured to protect. By focusing on Tuxpria’s case, Melo is drawing attention not only to the flawed justice system, but to a culture and region of Brazil that often goes overlooked and highlights the effects colonization still has on indigenous communities.
The narrator’s experiences are intensified by the ways she is processing her own trauma as this trip provided a timely escape from her boyfriend, Amir, who slapped her in a fit of jealous rage. Beyond the obvious red flag of domestic violence, this slap awoke the trauma she’d buried as a child who’d witnessed her mother’s abuse and murder at the hands of her father. It’s through the ritualistic use of ayahuasca tea with members of the indigenous community that the narrator is able to find clarity as she imagines herself surrounded by a community of warrior women, living and dead, out for vengeance. These visions are empowering as the narrator is desperate to find justice for Tuxpria, her mother, herself, and all of the women subjected to the violence of men and the failings of the legal system.
While men are cast as the villains of the novel, Melo uses the narrator’s experience and path to enlightenment to illustrate the ways shame and silence are used as weapons. Reporting abuse often calls into question the reputation of the abuser as well as his victim, which we see played out in several cases throughout the novel. Often a woman is reduced to an object whose story is rewritten under a critical lens that suggests her poor choices lead to her death or rewrite her as a minor character in her killer’s story. Amir does this by posting revenge porn of the narrator online when it was clear that she had no intention of taking him back. “I was being burned alive like a witch, with the whole world watching. Since he was unable to kill me physically, that utter scum Amir was trying to burn me on a virtual pyre.” But within this momentary shame was a stronger sense of rage and desire to reclaim the narrative. The narrator’s grandmother argues that “our silence is bullshit: Your mother died because of the silence. These women died because they weren’t able to speak. Not speaking,” she said, “is a tragedy.” Through this Melo illustrates how silence robs women of their stories and gives the abuser all of the power and allows him to continue his behavior on other unsuspecting women.
The title itself is dark and ironically morbid because the characters in this story illustrate the ways that the act of murder is simple. It is simple to kill a woman who has been systematically silenced by society, shame, or her situation where the legal system often favors the killer due to his social class or upstanding reputation. While the novel is not necessarily hopeful in terms of justice or policy reform, Melo creates a sense of healing in community with women of shared experience. As a reader, this seems to highlight the author’s intentions for the novel, not only to draw attention to the issue of femicide and domestic abuse, but to remind women that they are not alone and that there is power in numbers as well as taking ownership of your narrative and experience. Melo writes that, “when a woman dies, her story must be told and retold a thousand times,” which is both a remembrance and mourning for who the victim was and could have been, and a warning to others who might find themselves in similar situations and know when to seek refuge as the narrator did with Amir. The Simple Art of Killing a Woman is a timely call to action because abuse is isolating, but speaking out and owning our experiences allows us to create a powerful unified voice for change.
©2023 Iron Oak Editions LLC
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Breaking the Silence: An Exploration of Violence, Trauma, and Healing in The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patrícia Melo
FICTION REVIEW
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