This chapter traces black womanhood in Ellison’s writing to posit that he deploys a distinctly sonic figural aesthetic in his depictions black women that resounds with yet understudied meaning. Given Ellison’s stylistic attention to sound and music, interrogating the roles of black women as producers, performers, interpreters and instructors of sound and music reveals novel insights about the complex gendered dynamics of Ellison’s oeuvre. Oscillating between Invisible Man, “The Little Man at Chehaw Station” and “As the Spirit Moves Mahalia,” this chapter charts the soundings of black women to theorize about their pivotal role in structuring Ellison’s most well-known works

Given that the French authorities usually did not tell their families the real reason for their conviction, prisoners could claim after the war that they went to military prison for an act of resistance, which was technically not incorrect but either covered up an amorous relationship or gave it a functionality (such as facilitating an escape or undermining enemy morale) that it almost never had. Former inmates of the military prison of Graudenz formed an association in France and tried to get recognition as war victims. Women sentenced for a forbidden relation usually had to live with the stigma of the (often adulterous) relationship. While their sentences for the relationship were voided after the war, they never received any compensation for the injustice they suffered.