Pinky Chung-man Lui, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Abstract
Created, written, co-directed, and executively produced by British creator Michaela Coel, I May Destroy You (2020) is an autobiographical television series released in the midst of Covid-19, and centered around Arabella and her journey of rebuilding herself after a rape trauma. This article will examine Coel’s television series as a contemporary, Black feminist autobiographical text that explores the Black and female self in crisis through self-writing. Using her personal experience, Coel creates a story of destruction where the woman in crisis must deconstruct her past to build herself back up using writing as a self-help tool. In the process of doing so, Arabella learns to use anger as a tool, as many Black feminist writers have done so in writing before, to make her wounds transparent so she may begin to heal and transform. Self-writing stands as both a destructive and creative process that eventually helps the artist to confront her own darkness and self in crisis, reinstating her power through reclaiming her agency to speak. I May Destroy You as the end-product of such a process demonstrates how anger, when deliberately harnessed, can be transformed into a power for self-renewal and one that inspires reflections and change in its surrounding.
Keywords: autobiographical television, anger, feminism, sexual assault, authorship