Eva's Man is a novel written by Gayl Jones. It was first published in 1976.
Description[]
Eva's Man (1976), Jones's second novel, expands on the pain between African-American women and men, but it does so with an even greater sense of hopelessness. Like Corregidora, Eva's Man relies on minimalist dialogue and on interior monologues, but the latter play an even more important role in Jones' second novel, letting the reader see Eva Medina Canada's past and her descent into mental illness, indicated through repetition of key scenes with variations, implying that Eva's memory disintegrates. The reader encounters Eva in a prison for the criminally insane at the beginning of the story, to which she has been committed for poisoning and castrating her lover. Her flashbacks reveal a life of relentless sexual objectification by men, starting with Freddy, a neighborhood boy who wants to play doctor, to Tyrone, her mother's lover who molests her, to her cousin, who propositions her. The men she encounters regard her as sexual property and react with violence if she rejects their approaches. Davis, the lover she kills, epitomizes this tendency by imprisoning her in a room to which he only comes to sleep with her. By killing him, she rebels against male tyranny, but her descent into insanity indicates that she is unable to construct a new role for herself.