Tracy Chapman (1988)

‘Last Night’

This track talks about domestic abuse overheard by neighbours and of police inaction.

The context for this book began with my own lived experience of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in childhood. This happened at a time when children were not recognized as direct victims. We were ‘exposed’, we bore witness. We were on the periphery of chaos, trying to keep the mirage of normality while living so close to the eye of the storm. Looking back, one of the things I found so difficult, apart from living with abuse and violence, was the taboo of DVA. The only place that I found explicit reference to DVA in my younger years was through music, which inspired the use of music elicitation interviews in this study. Whether lyrics were by P!nk, Tracy Chapman, or Eminem, I sought out mentions of DVA in music lyrics to give voice to what I was experiencing. Music offered me recognition, comfort, companionship, understanding, at a time when I never explicitly told anyone what we were going through at home. I didn't find the words to describe it myself until much later. Therein lies one of the stranger aspects of DVA; it is often a hidden in plain sight. Throughout my childhood it became clear that I and my siblings were processing our challenges differently, my brother and I in particular. While I found solace in the rhythm and distraction of school, he quickly acted out and got in with the wrong crowd. I was being offered extra-curricular opportunities at school, while my brother was excluded and later expelled.

I left home and went to university to study feminist theory. As bell hooks (1994, p 59) has so articulately expressed, ‘I came to theory because I was hurting … I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend – to grasp what was happening around and within me’. I wanted to make sense of the inequality I felt. The tolerance for violence. The social and cultural weight placed on enduring marriage over safety. I have worked in gender-based violence support services ever since; working in violence prevention has helped me make use of my pain. After a few years I got a job in a refuge for women and children fleeing abuse.