The #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have sparked a significant cultural shift in the United States around sexual harassment and abuse by creating an environment of support, rather than one that punishes and silences women and men who come forward to tell their stories about abuse of all kinds. The Cape Verdean community faces a variety of complex challenges and barriers in addressing intimate partner violence. This article chronicles my experiences reporting the study findings from the Cape Verdean Women’s Project (CVWP), which included Cape Verdean women’s perceptions of intimate violence and their recommendations for social change.
Africa4 Women’s Rights. (2015). African women’s rights: Ratify and respect [Online forum comment]. http://www.africa4womenrights.org
2.
AkessonL.CarlingJ.DrotbohmH. (2012). Mobility, moralities, and motherhood: Navigating the contingencies of Cape Verdean lives. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 38(2), 237–260.
3.
AppiahK. A.GatesH. L.Jr. (1999). Africana: The encyclopedia of African and African American experience. Basic Books.
4.
ArnoldK. D.LuE. A.ArmstrongK. J. (2012). The human ecology framework. ASHE Higher Education Report, 38(5), 11–18.
5.
BarnettO. W.Miller-PerrinC. L.PerrinR. D. (2011). Family violence across the lifespan: An introduction (3rd ed.). Sage.
6.
Bent-GoodleyT. B. (2001). Eradicating domestic violence in the African American community: A literature review and action agenda. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 2(4), 316–330.
7.
Bent-GoodleyT. B. (2004). Perceptions of domestic violence: A dialogue with African American women. Health & Social Work, 29(4), 307–316.
8.
BergB. L. (1989). Qualitative research methods for social sciences. Sage.
9.
BonomiA. E.AllenD. G.HoltV. L. (2006). Conversational silence, coercion, equality: The role of language in influencing who gets identified as abused. Social Science & Medicine, 62(9), 2258–2226.
10.
BreidingM. J.BasileK. C.SmithS. G.BlackM. C.MahendraR. R. (2015). Intimate partner violence surveillance: Uniform definitions and recommended data elements (Version 2.0). National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Center for Disease and Control.
11.
CarbadoD. W.CrenshawK. W.MaysV. M.TomlinsonB. (2013). Intersectionality: Mapping the movements of a theory. Dubois Review, 10(2), 303–312.
12.
CarlingS. J. (2003). Cartography of Cape Verdean transnationalism. Global Networks, 3(4), 533–539.
13.
CarterK.AuletteJ. (2009). Cape Verdean women and globalization: The politics of gender, culture, and resistance. Palgrave Macmillan.
ChoS.CrenshawK. W.McCallL. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 785–810.
16.
CrenshawK. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
17.
CreswellJ. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Sage.
18.
CreswellJ. W.CreswellJ. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). Sage.
19.
De AndradeL. L. (1997). The question of race: Cape Verdean Americans talk about their race and identity. Cimboa: A Journal of Letters, Arts and Studies, 4(2), 23–25.
20.
FernándezM. (2006). Cultural beliefs and domestic violence. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1087(1), 250–260. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1385.005
21.
FuchselC. L. M.MurphyS. B.DufresneR. (2012). Domestic violence, culture, and relationship dynamics among immigrant Mexican women. Journal of Women and Social Work, 27(3), 263–274.
22.
GellesR. J. (1997). Intimate violence in families (3rd ed.). Sage.
23.
GosselinD. K. (2000). Heavy hands: An introduction to the crimes of domestic violence. Prentice-Hall.
24.
GulizarS. A.TabassumN. (2013). Under the veil of silence: Violence against women. Journal of Nursing, 3(2), 29–33.
25.
HalterM. (1993). Between race and ethnicity: Cape Verdean American immigrants, 1860-1965. University of Illinois Press.
26.
HalterM. (1998). Identity matters: The immigrant children. In FerranteJ.BrownP.Jr. (Eds.), The social construction of race and ethnicity in the United States (pp. 77–87). Addison-Wesley Educational.
27.
HammersleyM. (1990). Reading ethnographic research: A critical guide. Longman.
28.
JacksonV. H. (2002). Cultural competency: The challenges posed by a culturally diverse society and steps toward meeting them. Behavioral Health Management, 22(2), 20–26.
29.
JeremiahR. D.QuinnC. R.AlexisJ. J. (2017). Exposing the culture of silence: Inhibiting factors in prevention, treatment, and mitigation of sexual abuse in the Eastern Caribbean. Child Abuse & Neglect, 66, 53–63.
30.
Kalunta-CrumptonA. (2015). Intersections of patriarchy, national origin, and immigrant Nigerian women’s experiences of intimate partner violence in the United States. International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 41(1), 1–29.
31.
KasturiranganA.KrishananS.RigerS. (2004). The impact of culture and minority status on women’s experience of domestic violence. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 5(4), 318–332.
32.
KellyU. A. (2011). Theories of intimate partner violence: From blaming the victim to acting against injustice, intersectionality as an analytic framework. Advances in Nursing Science, 34(3), 29–51.
33.
KruegerR. A.CaseyM. A. (2015). Focus groups: A practical guide (5th ed.). Sage.
34.
LimaA. (2012). Cape Verdean immigrants in America: The socialization of young men in urban environment. LFB Scholarly Publishing.
LobbanR.SaucierP. K. (2007). Historical dictionary of the Republic of Cape Verde (4th ed.). Scarecrow Press.
37.
LópezI. H. (1996). White by law: The legal construction of race. University Press.
38.
López-FuentesI.CalveteE. (2015). Building resilience: A qualitative study of Spanish women who have suffered intimate partner violence. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 85(4), 339–351.
39.
MoeA. M. (2007). Silenced voices and structured survival: Battered women’s help seeking. Violence Against Women, 13(7), 676–699.
40.
MohantyC. T. (2013). Transnational feminist crossing: On neoliberalism and radical critique. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(40), 967–991.
41.
MorganD. L.KruegerR. A. (1993). When to use focus groups and why. In MorganD. L. (Ed.), Successful focus groups: Advancing the state of the art (pp. 3–19). Sage.
42.
NicholsA. J. (2013). Meaning-making and domestic violence victim advocacy: An examination of feminist identities, ideologies, and practices. Feminist Criminology, 8(3), 177–201.
43.
O’BrienK. K.CohenL.PooleyJ. A.TaylorM. F. (2013). Lifting the domestic violence cloak of silence: Resilient Australian women’s reflected memories of their childhood experiences of witnessing domestic violence. Journal of Family Violence, 28, 95–108.
OwusuD. A. (2016). Mute pain: The power of silence in triggering domestic violence in Ghana. Social Alternatives, 35(1), 26–32.
46.
ParkerK. F.HefnerM. K. (2013). Intersections of race, gender, disadvantage, and violence: Applying intersectionality to the macro-level study of female homicide. Justice Quarterly, 32(20), 223–254.
47.
PatilV. (2013). From patriarchy to intersectionality: A transnational feminist assessment of how far we’ve really come. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 847–867.
48.
PerillaJ. L.SerrataV. J.WeinbergJ.LippyC. A. (2012). Integrating women’s voices and theory: A comprehensive domestic violence intervention for Latinas. Women & Therapy, 35, 93–105.
49.
PittK. A. (2008). Intersectionality, gender and race in women’s experience of domestic violence: Applications to postcolonial Trinidad. Caribbean Journal of Social Work, 6(7), 58–82.
50.
SánchezG. E. (1998). Between Kriolu and Mercano: Cape Verdean diaspora identities. Cimboa: A Journal of Letters, Arts, and Studies, 5(5), 22–25.
51.
Sánchez-GibauG. (2005a). Contested identities: Narratives of race and ethnicity in the Cape Verdean diaspora. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 12, 405–438.
52.
Sánchez-GibauG. (2005b). Diasporic identity formation among Cape Verdeans in Boston. Western Journal of Black Studies, 29(2), 532–539.
SokoloffN. J. (2008). Expanding the intersectional paradigm to better understand domestic violence in immigrant communities. Critical Criminology, 16(4), 229–255.
55.
SokoloffN. J.DupontI. (2005). Domestic violence at the intersections of race, class, and gender. Violence Against Women, 11(1), 38–64.
56.
TervalonM.Murray-GarciaJ. (1998). Cultural humility versus cultural competence: A critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes in multicultural education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 9(2), 117–125.
57.
ThomasD. M. (2014). Cape Verdean perspective on disability: An invisible minority in New England. Women, Gender, and Families of Color, 2(2), 185–210.
58.
ThomasD. M. (2018). Breaking their silence on intimate partner violence: Discussions with Cape Verdean women. Journal of Cape Verdean Studies, 3(1), 66–91.
