Re.La.Vir

RE.LA.VIRrenders rape through the narrative filter of an online hypertext program. Juxtaposing savvy technical language and graphic scenes of sexual violence, the novel creates an alternative techno fictive space for representing lived experience. The pages of RE.LA.VIRare the scrolling text of a computer screen, as transitory and erasable as the body of the raped woman. RE.LA.VIRreenvisions her, offering the female speaker a wider range of voices and positions to act from than is allowed in traditional rape narrative.

Jan Ramjerdi is a professor of creative writing at California State University, Northridge.