This paper examines the similarities in Zora Neale Hurston's and Leonora Miano's representations of violence in Their Eyes Were Watching God and L'intérieur de la nuit (Dark Heart of the Night) in a bid to explain the link between violence, community history and selfhood. This essay purports that as African and African American old community histories have been tainted by violence brought on by slavery, colonization and decolonization, new community histories must be written. Hurston and Miano thus write new community histories through their heroines who confront analogous claustrophobic and exclusionary social environments. The analysis of the texts, which utilizes Sartre's and Fanon's theories on violence, drives to the conclusion that both novels are metaphors for their authors' self- assertion in the literary coterie and their search for new avenues for African and African American literatures